MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Some 24,000 people have signed up for Saturday’s mass demonstration in Berlin against Europe’s controversial free trade pacts with the United States and Canada, according to the event's official Facebook page.
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) seeks to liberalize trade between the United States and the European Union, among other parties. The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) is a similar agreement between the European Union and Canada.
The Berlin rally in support of fair trade is due to kick off at 12:00 p.m. (10:00 GMT) Saturday. It is being organized by a broad coalition of 16 civil rights groups, trade unions and environmental organizations, such as the German Trade Union Confederation, Oxfam and Greenpeace.
The rally's organizers warned that negotiations on both deals were to go into the end phase this fall, after German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Europeans to speed up the talks on EU trading arrangements at last June’s G7 summit.
TTIP’s stated goal is to ease the flow of goods and services across the Atlantic. The trade pact seeks to create the world's largest trade zone, encompassing over 60 percent of global production.
The controversial deal has been kept under unusual secrecy during the negotiations process, raising fears that the agreement could benefit multinational corporations at the expense of sovereign nations and consumers.
