[DominikR]

A trade deal has to be negotiated, and your position as a negotiator improves when you and the other side know that you can follow through on any commitment you make.

Therefore it follows that anyone who can negotiate from a position of secrecy or absolute power (dictatorship) is in a better position to achieve his goals during a negotiation.

You might laugh at this but I believe this is exactly how the EU commission thinks about this. Maybe they will try later again in a more dictatorial manner since secrecy has failed, who knows.

The other extreme would be that you negotiate from a position where you are constantly attacked by NGOs and your own people, which certainly doesn't help with creating trust that you can follow through on anything you sign. You can certainly place your signature on a document but it means nothing because you can't execute.

This was actually a problem during the Cold War crisis between JFK and the Soviet leaders. The Soviets were hard to convince that JFK could follow through because he was so heavily opposed by his senior military staff. They actually believed that there was a real possibility that JFK would be disposed by a military coup so they thought a war between the Soviet Union and the US was imminent and acted accordingly.

[Silhouette]

You can certainly place your signature on a document but it means nothing because you can't execute.

But how is this any different from signing a deal that you've happily made in secret, only to find that the people you claimed to represent won't honour that deal because something in it was unacceptable to them and rejecting it in its entirety is the only possible action you've left them that doesn't accept the unacceptable element?

[DominikR]

Well as I see it there are only two possibilities:

a) They let their people vote on it before ratifying the finalised treaty (maybe let them even vote multiple times until the result is right, the EU likes doing that)

b) They know for some reason or another that they will be able to enact it (they control media, the courts and the men with guns which definitely helps)

How is it any different? Well both parties start out a negotiation not knowing what the other sides limits are in certain areas, having society not interfere allows you to not give away this information to the other side.

If the negotiators are acting in the interest of their own people then you could assume that they will know quite well how far they can go.

So hopefully the result of such a negotiation will be a treaty that is acceptable to your population and beneficial in the way you wanted it to be.

My problem is not that there are secret negotiations, but instead that it is an immense uphill battle against mainstream media and politicians to get them not to ratify a treaty they have negotiated.

In most cases they do not allow us to vote on it, and the media acts as if they are directly controlled by politicians. And if they let us vote they'll repeat it indefinitely until they get the result they want as I wrote before.

To me the EU acts like a dictatorship that monitors it's populations closely and responds (only where absolutely necessary and often with lies - see their lies that there definitely wont be an EU army before the Brexit vote) to ensure that they wont revolt. But they certainly have their goals and they try to bring them about no matter what. You cannot vote if you want to achieve this goal, they wont even tell you what their goal or vision exactly entails. (except for some utopian phantasy nonsense, but they've dialled down on that since it is obvious that no one buys it anymore)

[Silhouette]

Well both parties start out a negotiation not knowing what the other sides limits are in certain areas, having society not interfere allows you to not give away this information to the other side.

Unfortunately, having society not interfere may also mean that you do not have that information yourself, even if you think you do.

If the negotiators are acting in the interest of their own people then you could assume that they will know quite well how far they can go.

Right, but that's a big "if". International trade agreements are like a textbook example of the principal-agent problem. It is extremely common for the negotiators to be adopting positions heavily influenced by special interest groups and business communities, with little if any regard for the effects on the actual people of the country those negotiators ostensibly represent. In the case of the EU, that issue is magnified further, because the EU itself can be (and often has been) used in a similar way.

[DominikR]

There is no doubt in my mind that the EU negotiated this in secret because they knew that society would be opposed. They likely would have tried to ratify this treaty afterwards in a stealthy way by suppressing media coverage or "encouraging" media give it a positive spin.

But I cannot prove this, that's why I'm also listing a few reasons for secret negotiations that could be acceptable for those who are inclined to give the EU the benefit of the doubt.