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© MICHAEL KAPPELER/AFP/Getty ImagesActivists prepare an anti-TTIP float.
More than 150,000 protesters participated Saturday in what was Germany's biggest rally yet against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, according to the city's police.


Comment: According to the Confederation of German Trade Unions (DGB), the organizer of the demonstration, 250,000 people rallied in Berlin.


Labor unions, environmentalists, social movements and anti-globalization activists like Attac were behind the protest, which goes by the slogan "Stop TTIP and CETA" — referring not just to the EU-U.S. trade deal but also a similar deal with Canada. Trains and buses brought people from across Germany to the capital, and the scale of the protest caused severe traffic disruptions.

"This is the biggest protest that Germany has seen for many years," said Christoph Bautz, CEO of the citizens' movement Campact, in a speech.

German protests
Even though the trade deal has been overshadowed by the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees, German opposition to TTIP shows no signs of abating. Opponents have been critical of what they perceive as opaque negotiations carried out away from public scrutiny, and of the potential role of arbitration tribunals in disputes between investors and governments.

TTIP negotiations between the European Commission and the U.S. government started in July 2013 with the aim to create a free-trade area, to remove trade barriers and to harmonize standards which would benefit both the U.S. and the EU's economy.

Sigmar Gabriel, the minister for economic affairs and energy, published an open letter in several newspapers on Saturday, defending the planned free-trade agreement and promising that none of the existing standards in the country would suffer, and warning that, "If we fail, we will have to follow others."

Earlier this week, he came out in favor of TTIP in an interview, after sitting on the fence for months and even admitting in June to doubting "if TTIP would ever happen."
German protests
"If the negotiations fail, we will have to adapt ourselves to other standards, maybe those that will one day be agreed upon between China and the U.S.," he told business magazine WirtschaftsWoche.

In a non-representative survey of 3,000 app users conducted by public broadcaster ZDF this week, 88 percent of respondents answered "No" to the question "Will the German economy benefit from TTIP?"

In a Eurobarometer poll from May, 51 percent of Germans said they were against a free-trade agreement with the U.S., while only 31 percent were in favor.

Earlier this week, EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström voiced astonishment at the level of opposition to TTIP among Germans, especially "because the German economy will most likely profit the most from it."

In an interview with Süddeutsche Zeitung, she said the Volkswagen emissions scandal ought to suggest some humility vis-à-vis Europe's U.S. partners.

"I spent much time explaining to the Americans that we have the highest environmental standards in Germany. And now it turns out that we're not perfect," she said.

The next round of TTIP discussions between the European Commission and Washington is scheduled for October 19, 2015.