MEPs have voted to back a plan aimed at healing divisions over a trade deal between the EU and the US.<br /><br /> The European Parliament had been split on the idea of having private arbitration for investors to settle disputes.<br /><br /> Lawmakers decided they must be handled by publicly-appointed judges by 436 votes to 241, with 32 abstentions<br /><br /> “Clearly we have placed the extra-judicial arbitration in the dustbin of history. it is clear that private tribunals have no future in trade agreements. And we will work on a new system, which corresponds to a public court,” said Bernd Lange, a German centre-left MEP <br /><br /> Such Investor-State Dispute Settlement clauses, or ISDS, are common in trade deals. They allow foreign investors to use arbitration panels instead of domestic courts to challenge a government when an investment is considered to have been harmed<br /><br /> Centre-right parliamentarians see a U.S. trade deal as good for business.<br /><br /> But the Greens and some far-left and far-right MEPs see it as a threat to
