In a healthy democracy, reform should come from the legislative branch.

The general interest is that smart people work to help humanity and make no profit.

The smart people particular interest is to work to make profit.

In other words, Gates defended his personal interest and now defends the general interest by telling people to do what he says and not what he did.

There is no way the EU parliament can push an amendment if the EU council disagree. We even saw the commission removing amendments when moving a draft from EU parliament to EU council. The only real power of the EU parliament is to reject.

I have trouble to believe Monstanto and others will be able to give up on GMO requirements in TAFTA. Greed leads them.

But time will tell.

EU has a powerless parliament, who cannot propose a directive, who cannot have the last word against the EU council (except to reject a directive), and who does not decide the budget.

EU parliament is just here so that we can be told EU is democratic. The truth is that you can vote whatever you want at EU elections, you will not change anything to the hundred of economical policies that are carved in the treaties. All that stuff has just been removed from democratic decision.

Tell that to the many nations that are not part of EU.

The biggest problem IMO is that it lets megacorporations turn what people eat into their own intellectual property.

OTOH, the anti-GMO pressure is so strong on EU MP and MEP that if TAFTA favors GMO, it is likely to be voted down.

This is a subject of astonishment to me, but EU people are able to strongly reject GMO, while they fail to really oppose austerity policies.

This deserves mod points!

But the EU has been an anti-democratic power for decades, and it seems magic thinking to believe it could evolve in the right direction now. Giving more power to it is an attack on democracy. Giving it an army seems just foolish.

GMO that are resistant to roundup can be treated with a lot of roundup, which ends up in your body. The GMO is safe, roundup is not.

This is the first step to get rid of the EU: reintroduce barriers within the common market.

Next, let's kill the Euro, and perhaps we will regain the ability to do in Europe interesting projects that are just impossible right now: if a project like Ariane would start today, the EU commission would kill it because of free market distortions