German Unesco Commission wants to set limits to TTIP
At its 75th General Assembly in Regensburg, the German Unesco Commission passed a resolution demanding that the free trade agreement TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) currently being negotiated should include freedom of regulation to safeguard cultural and media diversity.
In view of the fact that the USA has not acceded to the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of Cultural Diversity, the resolution calls for "normatively effective approaches to cultural, media and educational policy protection to be enshrined in all relevant chapters of the TTIP agreement".
It also points out that "the far-reaching effects that such an agreement could have on the cultural infrastructure and on the media, culture, science and education on offer in Germany" continue to require an informed and broad social and political debate and should not be subject exclusively to economic policy considerations.
Finally, it calls on German politicians to unequivocally "advocate legally effective protection mechanisms in the sense of a technology-neutral further development of regulation to safeguard diversity of information and opinion, media pluralism and linguistic and cultural diversity, and to advocate this in the coming rounds of negotiations".
The whole resolution: www.unesco.de/index.php?id=reshv75_ttip
