> The EP have generally been the 'good' guys in history, and I highly doubt that they're going to U-turn and go against everything they created in the past few decades
This is a very rose-tinted view of MEPs. Like most of the European machinery, their work is not scrutinised with the same level of detail that applies to national parliaments; you hear about them when something particularly controversial comes up for voting, and at that point, most vote "with the public" just to go back to the quiet life. In some cases, they vote to stick it to the (undemocratically appointed and way too powerful) Commission, with whom there are long standing constitutional conflicts that are far from being settled. The Commission typically represents overall winners at the previous round of national elections (it's appointed by national ministers), whereas the EP is elected with mostly-proportional mechanisms, resulting in smaller (and louder) parties prevailing; that, of course, increases conflicts. In addition, there is the issue of large transnational groups (conservatives and socialists) constantly struggling between national priorities and traditional party discipline.
Obviously that's not always the case -- a lot of MEPs do work hard for the public and just vote with their conscience -- but I'm just saying they are not innately "good", their voting record is the sum of many factors and as far as I know there is no such thing as the will of MEPs "as a whole".
> If TTIP is horrible, I still have faith that our MEPs will reject it.
That would be interesting, and it would create a big constitutional mess. The Commission could technically soldier on and just push it down to national parliaments; would it be OK for them to ratify such a significant treaty after the (theoretically superior) EP rejected it? I'm not a scholar, there might be precedents in this area, but the EU is not a "common law" institution anyway...
This is a very rose-tinted view of MEPs. Like most of the European machinery, their work is not scrutinised with the same level of detail that applies to national parliaments; you hear about them when something particularly controversial comes up for voting, and at that point, most vote "with the public" just to go back to the quiet life. In some cases, they vote to stick it to the (undemocratically appointed and way too powerful) Commission, with whom there are long standing constitutional conflicts that are far from being settled. The Commission typically represents overall winners at the previous round of national elections (it's appointed by national ministers), whereas the EP is elected with mostly-proportional mechanisms, resulting in smaller (and louder) parties prevailing; that, of course, increases conflicts. In addition, there is the issue of large transnational groups (conservatives and socialists) constantly struggling between national priorities and traditional party discipline.
Obviously that's not always the case -- a lot of MEPs do work hard for the public and just vote with their conscience -- but I'm just saying they are not innately "good", their voting record is the sum of many factors and as far as I know there is no such thing as the will of MEPs "as a whole".
> If TTIP is horrible, I still have faith that our MEPs will reject it.
That would be interesting, and it would create a big constitutional mess. The Commission could technically soldier on and just push it down to national parliaments; would it be OK for them to ratify such a significant treaty after the (theoretically superior) EP rejected it? I'm not a scholar, there might be precedents in this area, but the EU is not a "common law" institution anyway...