Green Party co-leader Russel Norman says an international conference in Japan is worried a proposed trans-Pacific trade deal will restrict the sovereign rights of individual countries.
Dr Norman says the conference in Tokyo has been organised by Japanese MPs worried their government might join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) talks, which involve 10 countries, including New Zealand.
He says their biggest worry is that under the deal, the right of countries to make their own laws would be constrained.
"There's a series changes that the corporations that are driving this process are very keen to make," he says, "and they would lock all of the different parliaments into those changes."
