This transatlantic trade deal is a full-frontal assault on democracy
[ http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... -democracy ]
Brussels has kept quiet about a treaty that would let rapacious companies subvert our laws, rights and national sovereignty
George Monbiot
The Guardian, Monday 4 November 2013 20.31 GMT
Remember that referendum about whether we should create a single market with the United States? You know, the one that asked whether corporations should have the power to strike down our laws? No, I don't either. Mind you, I spent 10 minutes looking for my watch the other day before I realised I was wearing it. Forgetting about the referendum is another sign of ageing. Because there must have been one, mustn't there? After all that agonising over whether or not we should stay in the European Union, the government wouldn't cede our sovereignty to some shadowy, undemocratic body without consulting us. Would it?
The purpose of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership [ http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/in-focus/ttip/ ] is to remove the regulatory differences between the US and European nations. I mentioned it a couple of weeks ago. [ http://www.monbiot.com/2013/10/14/elite-insurgency/ ] But I left out the most important issue: the remarkable ability it would grant big business to sue the living daylights out of governments which try to defend their citizens. It would allow a secretive panel of corporate lawyers to overrule the will of parliament and destroy our legal protections. Yet the defenders of our sovereignty say nothing.
The mechanism through which this is achieved is known as investor-state dispute settlement. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investor-s ... settlement ] It's already being used in many parts of the world to kill regulations protecting people and the living planet.
The Australian government, after massive debates in and out of parliament, decided that cigarettes should be sold in plain packets, [ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20559585 ] marked only with shocking health warnings. The decision was validated by the Australian supreme court. But, using a trade agreement Australia struck with Hong Kong, [ http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/j ... te-packets ] the tobacco company Philip Morris has asked an offshore tribunal to award it a vast sum in compensation for the loss of what it calls its intellectual property.
During its financial crisis, and in response to public anger over rocketing charges, Argentina imposed a freeze on people's energy and water bills (does this sound familiar?). It was sued by the international utility companies whose vast bills had prompted the government to act. For this and other such crimes, it has been forced to pay out over a billion dollars in compensation. In El Salvador, local communities managed at great cost (three campaigners were murdered) [ http://www.canadians.org/fr/node/5297 ] to persuade the government to refuse permission for a vast gold mine which threatened to contaminate their water supplies. A victory for democracy? Not for long, perhaps. The Canadian company which sought to dig the mine is now suing El Salvador for $315m – for the loss of its anticipated future profits.
In Canada, the courts revoked two patents owned by the American drugs firm Eli Lilly, on the grounds that the company had not produced enough evidence that they had the beneficial effects it claimed. Eli Lilly is now suing the Canadian government for $500m, and demanding that Canada's patent laws are changed.
[ http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/eli-lil ... -1.1829854 ]
These companies (along with hundreds of others) are using the investor-state dispute rules embedded in trade treaties signed by the countries they are suing. The rules are enforced by panels which have none of the safeguards we expect in our own courts. The hearings are held in secret. The judges are corporate lawyers, many of whom work for companies of the kind whose cases they hear. Citizens and communities affected by their decisions have no legal standing. There is no right of appeal on the merits of the case. Yet they can overthrow the sovereignty of parliaments and the rulings of supreme courts.
You don't believe it? Here's what one of the judges on these tribunals says about his work. "When I wake up at night and think about arbitration, it never ceases to amaze me that sovereign states have agreed to investment arbitration at all ... Three private individuals are entrusted with the power to review, without any restriction or appeal procedure, all actions of the government, all decisions of the courts, and all laws and regulations emanating from parliament."
There are no corresponding rights for citizens. We can't use these tribunals to demand better protections from corporate greed. As the Democracy Centre says, this is "a privatised justice system for global corporations". [ http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/eli-lil ... -1.1829854 ]
MORE:
TTIP - USA & Europe Transatlantic Trade & Investment
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• Page 1 of 1
TTIP - USA & Europe Transatlantic Trade & Investment
by Oscar » Sun Nov 10, 2013 4:12 pm
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NSA Spying Scandal Roils US-EU Trade Negotiations
by Oscar » Mon Nov 11, 2013 9:21 pm
NSA Spying Scandal Roils US-EU Trade Negotiations
[ http://truth-out.org/news/item/19957-ns ... gotiations ]
Monday, 11 November 2013 09:49 By Mary Bottari, PR Watch | Report
Another day, another outraged world leader. The NSA was caught listening in on Angela Merkel's cell phone much in the way the crooks at Murdoch's News of the World (now standing trial in a British courtroom) hacked into the phones of celebrities, politicians and teenage crime victims.
But there is one good thing coming out of the NSA embroglio. It is endangering the U.S.-EU trade agreement currently being negotiated behind closed doors with some 600 U.S. industry advisors. New revelations that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is one of the NSA's "clients" will further complicate negotiations set to resume in Brussels November 11.
TTIP: It is Not About Trade
Although proponents of the pact like to talk about reducing tariffs, facilitating trade and creating jobs, in actuality the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has little to do with these traditional trade topics. Bound by the longstanding World Trade Organization agreements, the U.S. and the EU have practically nonexistent tariffs and enjoy a robust trade relationship topping $1 trillion a year. Moreover, according to the number crunchers at the Economic Policy Institute, the pact is projected to result in a U.S. job loss of some 700,000 and a deeper trade deficit with the EU.
What the TTIP is all about is locking in a deregulatory regime that threatens some of the best consumer and environmental laws on both sides of the Atlantic.
At a recent meeting in Brussels with top U.S. and European TTIP negotiators, including Assistant U.S. Trade Representative Dan Mullaney and Ignacio Garcia-Bercero of the European Commission's Directorate General for Trade, consumer advocates from both sides of the Atlantic demanded answers.
Meeting under the auspices of the 14 year-old Transatlantic Consumer Diaglogue, the consumer advocates pushed negotiators for the text of the agreement. "We have had some experience with this you know, words matter, commas matter," said Jamie Love, Director of Knoweledge Ecology, while others pointed out that many bi-lateral and multi-lateral trade pacts are negotiated with texts being published frequently.
TACD was created during the Clinton administration to advise governments about transatlantic trade. But after surviving the Bush administration, TACD is getting few direct answers from Obama administration officials. At the TACD meeting, Team Obama stuck to shallow, Chamber of Commerce-style talking points and didn't have the diplomatic aplomb to wow the crowd with a promise of a meeting with U.S. Trade Rep Michael Froman, something TACD asked for months ago. Officials seemed unaware that the consumer advocates had presented them with highly detailed papers on the threat the trade agreement posed to key consumer protection laws in dozens of areas, including:
Chemicals Regulation and Nanotechnology
Food Safety
E-commerce
Financial Regulation
Investor-State Dispute Resolution
Data flows
Intellectual Property Rights
While the consumer groups pressed in a detailed way on online privacy, chemicals and financial services protections, trade negotiators and regulators simply asked consumer advocates to trust them and repeatedly promised not to lower standards. One particularly clueless EU health and consumer safety regulator told the crowd that the trade agreement had nothing to do with regulations. She apparently missed the earlier part of the meeting where the EU's chief negotiator, Beceria, admitted that the agreement was all about regulatory "barriers to trade."
Beceria seem quite aware that trade concepts like regulatory "equivalency" and "mutual recognition" of policies, when those policies have very different levels of consumer protection, threatens a race to the bottom, allowing a lower level of consumer protection to prevail in the context of a binding trade agreement with not just one, but two enforcement mechanisms.
Private Corporate Courts Empowered to Attack Consumer, Environmental Policies
Another issue that stirred outrage among the consumer groups was plans by negotiators to include an investor-state dispute resolution mechanism in the pact. While most trade agreements contain a state-state enforcement mechanism that allows goverments to sue governments to enforce the terms of the agreement in a closed door trade tribunal, investor-state is a type of private court, where corporate interests can directly sue nations for cash damages over public health, consumer and environmental regulations that they feel have infringed on their profitability and rights granted under the agreement. While corporations can't overturn laws, the mere threat of a major cash damages suit has discouraged nations from pursuing certain types of regulatory policies and inviting more cases.
These special investor protections were originally created early in the 20th century, obstensibly to help foreign investors obtain compensation for direct expropriation of private property by national governments in developing nations with poorly functioning domestic court systems.
But the notion has been perverted through trade agreements to apply to "indirect" expropriation and it has been used in recent years not only to attack consumer laws, but to relitigate issues already decided by domestic courts in developed nations. Thus, we have the U.S. pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly demanding $500 million from Canada in a NAFTA trade tribunal because the Canadian Supreme Court failed to give them monopoly patent rights over two drugs and we see Phillip Morris suing Australia via a Hong Kong trade agreement over new plain packaging rules for tobacco in an attempt to discourage smoking. In Europe, Germany's decision to phase out nuclear power in the wake of Fukushima is being challenged by a Swedish nuclear power company under another investment treaty.
To see what might happen under the TTIP, one only need look at a few examples from the corporate wish list. While TACD supports the strong European chemicals law called REACH, U.S. chemical industry wants exemptions from it. The American Chemical Council opines "A lack of regulatory compatibility with respect to endocrine disrupting chemicals could have a significant impact on trans-Atlantic trade, on agricultural as well as industrial goods." The Association of German Banks argues that the Volcker Rule, the centerpiece of the U.S. Wall Street reform act which clamps down on reckless Wall Street gambling, is much too burdensome for non-U.S. banks.
Monique Goyens, Director General of BEUC, the largest consumer federation in Europe, calls investor-state "a brazen approach" that "leaves open the possibility of private judgments being passed, outside of court, over government's future efforts to tighten up consumer protection."
NSA's "Client" USTR
The NSA spying scandal and revelations of mass surveillance in France, Spain and Germany has "shatterd" public trust in the negotiations, reports EU papers.
MORE:
[ http://truth-out.org/news/item/19957-ns ... gotiations ]
[ http://truth-out.org/news/item/19957-ns ... gotiations ]
Monday, 11 November 2013 09:49 By Mary Bottari, PR Watch | Report
Another day, another outraged world leader. The NSA was caught listening in on Angela Merkel's cell phone much in the way the crooks at Murdoch's News of the World (now standing trial in a British courtroom) hacked into the phones of celebrities, politicians and teenage crime victims.
But there is one good thing coming out of the NSA embroglio. It is endangering the U.S.-EU trade agreement currently being negotiated behind closed doors with some 600 U.S. industry advisors. New revelations that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is one of the NSA's "clients" will further complicate negotiations set to resume in Brussels November 11.
TTIP: It is Not About Trade
Although proponents of the pact like to talk about reducing tariffs, facilitating trade and creating jobs, in actuality the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has little to do with these traditional trade topics. Bound by the longstanding World Trade Organization agreements, the U.S. and the EU have practically nonexistent tariffs and enjoy a robust trade relationship topping $1 trillion a year. Moreover, according to the number crunchers at the Economic Policy Institute, the pact is projected to result in a U.S. job loss of some 700,000 and a deeper trade deficit with the EU.
What the TTIP is all about is locking in a deregulatory regime that threatens some of the best consumer and environmental laws on both sides of the Atlantic.
At a recent meeting in Brussels with top U.S. and European TTIP negotiators, including Assistant U.S. Trade Representative Dan Mullaney and Ignacio Garcia-Bercero of the European Commission's Directorate General for Trade, consumer advocates from both sides of the Atlantic demanded answers.
Meeting under the auspices of the 14 year-old Transatlantic Consumer Diaglogue, the consumer advocates pushed negotiators for the text of the agreement. "We have had some experience with this you know, words matter, commas matter," said Jamie Love, Director of Knoweledge Ecology, while others pointed out that many bi-lateral and multi-lateral trade pacts are negotiated with texts being published frequently.
TACD was created during the Clinton administration to advise governments about transatlantic trade. But after surviving the Bush administration, TACD is getting few direct answers from Obama administration officials. At the TACD meeting, Team Obama stuck to shallow, Chamber of Commerce-style talking points and didn't have the diplomatic aplomb to wow the crowd with a promise of a meeting with U.S. Trade Rep Michael Froman, something TACD asked for months ago. Officials seemed unaware that the consumer advocates had presented them with highly detailed papers on the threat the trade agreement posed to key consumer protection laws in dozens of areas, including:
Chemicals Regulation and Nanotechnology
Food Safety
E-commerce
Financial Regulation
Investor-State Dispute Resolution
Data flows
Intellectual Property Rights
While the consumer groups pressed in a detailed way on online privacy, chemicals and financial services protections, trade negotiators and regulators simply asked consumer advocates to trust them and repeatedly promised not to lower standards. One particularly clueless EU health and consumer safety regulator told the crowd that the trade agreement had nothing to do with regulations. She apparently missed the earlier part of the meeting where the EU's chief negotiator, Beceria, admitted that the agreement was all about regulatory "barriers to trade."
Beceria seem quite aware that trade concepts like regulatory "equivalency" and "mutual recognition" of policies, when those policies have very different levels of consumer protection, threatens a race to the bottom, allowing a lower level of consumer protection to prevail in the context of a binding trade agreement with not just one, but two enforcement mechanisms.
Private Corporate Courts Empowered to Attack Consumer, Environmental Policies
Another issue that stirred outrage among the consumer groups was plans by negotiators to include an investor-state dispute resolution mechanism in the pact. While most trade agreements contain a state-state enforcement mechanism that allows goverments to sue governments to enforce the terms of the agreement in a closed door trade tribunal, investor-state is a type of private court, where corporate interests can directly sue nations for cash damages over public health, consumer and environmental regulations that they feel have infringed on their profitability and rights granted under the agreement. While corporations can't overturn laws, the mere threat of a major cash damages suit has discouraged nations from pursuing certain types of regulatory policies and inviting more cases.
These special investor protections were originally created early in the 20th century, obstensibly to help foreign investors obtain compensation for direct expropriation of private property by national governments in developing nations with poorly functioning domestic court systems.
But the notion has been perverted through trade agreements to apply to "indirect" expropriation and it has been used in recent years not only to attack consumer laws, but to relitigate issues already decided by domestic courts in developed nations. Thus, we have the U.S. pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly demanding $500 million from Canada in a NAFTA trade tribunal because the Canadian Supreme Court failed to give them monopoly patent rights over two drugs and we see Phillip Morris suing Australia via a Hong Kong trade agreement over new plain packaging rules for tobacco in an attempt to discourage smoking. In Europe, Germany's decision to phase out nuclear power in the wake of Fukushima is being challenged by a Swedish nuclear power company under another investment treaty.
To see what might happen under the TTIP, one only need look at a few examples from the corporate wish list. While TACD supports the strong European chemicals law called REACH, U.S. chemical industry wants exemptions from it. The American Chemical Council opines "A lack of regulatory compatibility with respect to endocrine disrupting chemicals could have a significant impact on trans-Atlantic trade, on agricultural as well as industrial goods." The Association of German Banks argues that the Volcker Rule, the centerpiece of the U.S. Wall Street reform act which clamps down on reckless Wall Street gambling, is much too burdensome for non-U.S. banks.
Monique Goyens, Director General of BEUC, the largest consumer federation in Europe, calls investor-state "a brazen approach" that "leaves open the possibility of private judgments being passed, outside of court, over government's future efforts to tighten up consumer protection."
NSA's "Client" USTR
The NSA spying scandal and revelations of mass surveillance in France, Spain and Germany has "shatterd" public trust in the negotiations, reports EU papers.
MORE:
[ http://truth-out.org/news/item/19957-ns ... gotiations ]
- Oscar
- Site Admin
- Posts: 9966
- Joined: Wed May 03, 2006 3:23 pm
EU halts TTIP investor-state talks with the United States
by Oscar » Thu Jan 23, 2014 11:45 am
European Union halts TTIP investor-state talks with the United States
[ http://canadians.org/blog/european-unio ... ted-states ]
by Brent Patterson January 22, 2014 - 8:13am
The BBC reports, [ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25829604 ] "The European Commission has suspended talks on part of a far-reaching European Union-United States free trade deal (the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) amid concern that hard-won social protections in Europe might be undermined. The trade negotiations began last year but now the Commission has launched a three-month public consultation on the proposed investment rules (the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism) for firms."
Council of Canadians trade campaigner Stuart Trew comments, [ http://canadians.org/media/ceta-canada- ... rade-deals ] "The Council of Canadians welcomes a decision of the European Commission to hold public consultations on a controversial investor rights chapter in the U.S.-EU Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. The Council asks that those hearings be expanded to consider identical investment protections in the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement. The Council is also calling on the Harper government to hold similar consultations in light of the atrociously high number of investment lawsuits brought against Canada."
The BBC article notes, "Questions have also been raised about the dispute settlement mechanism in an EU-Canada free trade deal, which has been negotiated but not yet ratified. UK Labour MEP David Martin voiced concern that such deals might make privatisations irreversible. He gave as an example the UK government selling off part of the National Health Service to a Canadian firm - and a future UK government finding it legally impossible to renationalise that service."
On January 14, the Independent reported, [ http://canadians.org/blog/all-party-mot ... provisions ] "An Early Day Motion in (the British) Parliament, signed by MPs from all parties, calls for the (EU-US) trade talks to be frozen until the issue is resolved." In that article, Tory MP Zac Goldsmith says, "It is hard to see how this won’t seriously jeopardise the sovereignty of the UK Government and its legal system. Disputes between companies and legislators should always be dealt with by British courts." Labour MP John Healey says, "It is not clear ISDSs are justified at all when the agreement will be struck between countries with some of the most advanced and stable legal systems in the world." And Green Party MP Caroline Lucas says, "(The move would) overturn decades of laws and regulations formed through democratic processes on both sides of the Atlantic."
The BBC report continues, "Announcing the public consultation, EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said 'governments must always be free to regulate so they can protect people and the environment'. 'But they must also find the right balance and treat investors fairly, so they can attract investment... Some existing arrangements have caused problems in practice, allowing companies to exploit loopholes where the legal text has been vague.' He said Europeans had raised 'genuine concerns about this part of the EU-US deal' and 'now I want them to have their say'."
"Last week 10 European NGOs issued a joint statement raising doubts about the TTIP's mechanism for legal disputes... The statement said there was a risk the mechanism could 'open the gates for multinationals and investors to sue EU member states if new environmental or health legislation is introduced that adversely affects their business prospects'."
A few examples that the Council of Canadians have highlighted are here:
[ http://canadians.org/blog/europeans-fac ... enges-ceta ]
"The trade deal cannot become law unless the parliament approves it."
- - - -
Further reading
Canada should mirror EU consultations on investor "rights" chapter in transatlantic trade deals
[ http://canadians.org/media/ceta-canada- ... rade-deals ]
All-party motion in UK expresses concern about investor-state provisions
[ http://canadians.org/blog/all-party-mot ... provisions ]
More than 100 organizations sign transatlantic statement opposing dangerous investor "rights" chapter in CETA
[ http://canadians.org/media/eu-canada-tr ... t-opposing ]
Europeans face investor-state challenges with CETA
[ http://canadians.org/blog/europeans-fac ... enges-ceta ]
Brent Patterson's blog
[ http://canadians.org/blogs/brent-patterson ]
[ http://canadians.org/blog/european-unio ... ted-states ]
by Brent Patterson January 22, 2014 - 8:13am
The BBC reports, [ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25829604 ] "The European Commission has suspended talks on part of a far-reaching European Union-United States free trade deal (the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) amid concern that hard-won social protections in Europe might be undermined. The trade negotiations began last year but now the Commission has launched a three-month public consultation on the proposed investment rules (the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism) for firms."
Council of Canadians trade campaigner Stuart Trew comments, [ http://canadians.org/media/ceta-canada- ... rade-deals ] "The Council of Canadians welcomes a decision of the European Commission to hold public consultations on a controversial investor rights chapter in the U.S.-EU Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. The Council asks that those hearings be expanded to consider identical investment protections in the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement. The Council is also calling on the Harper government to hold similar consultations in light of the atrociously high number of investment lawsuits brought against Canada."
The BBC article notes, "Questions have also been raised about the dispute settlement mechanism in an EU-Canada free trade deal, which has been negotiated but not yet ratified. UK Labour MEP David Martin voiced concern that such deals might make privatisations irreversible. He gave as an example the UK government selling off part of the National Health Service to a Canadian firm - and a future UK government finding it legally impossible to renationalise that service."
On January 14, the Independent reported, [ http://canadians.org/blog/all-party-mot ... provisions ] "An Early Day Motion in (the British) Parliament, signed by MPs from all parties, calls for the (EU-US) trade talks to be frozen until the issue is resolved." In that article, Tory MP Zac Goldsmith says, "It is hard to see how this won’t seriously jeopardise the sovereignty of the UK Government and its legal system. Disputes between companies and legislators should always be dealt with by British courts." Labour MP John Healey says, "It is not clear ISDSs are justified at all when the agreement will be struck between countries with some of the most advanced and stable legal systems in the world." And Green Party MP Caroline Lucas says, "(The move would) overturn decades of laws and regulations formed through democratic processes on both sides of the Atlantic."
The BBC report continues, "Announcing the public consultation, EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said 'governments must always be free to regulate so they can protect people and the environment'. 'But they must also find the right balance and treat investors fairly, so they can attract investment... Some existing arrangements have caused problems in practice, allowing companies to exploit loopholes where the legal text has been vague.' He said Europeans had raised 'genuine concerns about this part of the EU-US deal' and 'now I want them to have their say'."
"Last week 10 European NGOs issued a joint statement raising doubts about the TTIP's mechanism for legal disputes... The statement said there was a risk the mechanism could 'open the gates for multinationals and investors to sue EU member states if new environmental or health legislation is introduced that adversely affects their business prospects'."
A few examples that the Council of Canadians have highlighted are here:
[ http://canadians.org/blog/europeans-fac ... enges-ceta ]
"The trade deal cannot become law unless the parliament approves it."
- - - -
Further reading
Canada should mirror EU consultations on investor "rights" chapter in transatlantic trade deals
[ http://canadians.org/media/ceta-canada- ... rade-deals ]
All-party motion in UK expresses concern about investor-state provisions
[ http://canadians.org/blog/all-party-mot ... provisions ]
More than 100 organizations sign transatlantic statement opposing dangerous investor "rights" chapter in CETA
[ http://canadians.org/media/eu-canada-tr ... t-opposing ]
Europeans face investor-state challenges with CETA
[ http://canadians.org/blog/europeans-fac ... enges-ceta ]
Brent Patterson's blog
[ http://canadians.org/blogs/brent-patterson ]
- Oscar
- Site Admin
- Posts: 9966
- Joined: Wed May 03, 2006 3:23 pm
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