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Anti-TTIP activists cover up 700 ads on Brussels metro
Brussels public transport operator Stib and the advertising multinational JC Decaux have begun legal action against persons unknown, after hundreds of advertising billboards were sabotaged with messages against the TTIP trade deal.
About 700 advertising posters dotted throughout various Brussels metro stations were covered up with posters featuring the message "Reboot democracy".
"We obviously cannot let people use our billboards freely and wildly," JC Decaux deputy manager Jérôme Blanchevoye told La Capitale.
"What was displayed was against the ethical charter of the Stib, and so we could not allow these messages to be placed. The charter says that we cannot disseminate political views in advertising."
Stib spokesman Guy Sablon added that the public transport operator was in the process of clearing all the messages.
Anti-TTIP posters in the Brussels metro. #TTIP #CETA pic.twitter.com/tNQtBprXgl
— James Crisp (@JamesCrisp6) 7 July 2016
It is far from the first time that anti-TTIP activists have expressed their distaste for the EU-US trade deal in such a way. In early June, a group hacked a major billboard overlooking the European Commission.
Disguised as maintenance workers, the activists had replaced the original advertisement on Rue de la Loi with the message: “TTIP GAME OVER: No more negotiations, no more free-trade deals, it’s time for action."
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is a bilateral agreement between the EU and the US. It is a deal that aims to strip down various restraints that are believed to hinder the growth of big business.
Those in favour of the agreement argue that the joining of the two largest worldwide markets will add a wealth of opportunities for economic growth, whereas the anti-TTIP side are firm in their stance that an adverse effect on human rights will follow, with unions potentially losing power, and diluted standards of protection. A petition against the TTIP agreement recently collected three million signatures.
Comments
USA is not to be trusted, something made abundantly clear with FATCA. The abuse of the position of the dollar, the Bretton Woods agreement ,in order to force the entire world, at the point of a financial gun, in to reporting the presence of any "US person" anywhere in the world.
This combined with their "exceptional" citizenship based taxation means eight million people, their families and businesses can be used as Trojan horses to remove cash from our economies and transfer it to the USA. The abuse any "American" now faces from his own country and the discrimination he faces in his adopted country as financial institutions seek to remove the danger to their business by removing Americans from their books is simply outrageous, and the world remains largely ignorant and silent on the matter.
I have to admit to knowing very little about TTIP, but FATCA was described as nothing more than a mutual exchange of information in order to tackle tax evasion. Who could object to that? Anybody who takes time out to understand it should be red with rage. It seems some people also see beyond a simple trade agreement, TTIP. As far as I am concerned, having seen the damage done to some US friends in the UK, so leading me to look in to this simple "anti tax evasion" agreement called FATCA, the USA can go take a running jump.
The statement in the article about hindering big business! one thing I hate about going back to the UK if you dropped me on most main high streets with a list of the big coperate retails no doubt I'd find Mac Donald, Pizza Hut, Costa, Starbucks etc galore and very few local ships to tell me about where I was or what they were proud of. I'm so glad that here very few of these establishments have their foot in the door and local villages retain local shops and services