Plans to create an EU-US single market will allow corporations to sue governments using secretive panels, bypassing courts and parliaments

A nuclear power plant in Biblis, south-west Germany. The investor-state dispute settlement is aready ‚being used by a nuclear company contesting Germany’s decision to switch off atomic power‘. Photograph: Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters
Panic spreads through the European commission like ferrets in a rabbit warren. Its plans to create a single market incorporating Europe and the United States, progressing so nicely when hardly anyone knew, have been blown wide open. All over Europe people are asking why this is happening; why we were not consulted; for whom it is being done.