GATS WTO NICE AND REFERENDUM COMMISSION : Praise the Internet and Pass the Ammo

Friday August 30, 2002 17:11

by Blisset (Slight Return)

THERE IS SYSTEMATIC CENSORSHIP OF THIS ASPECT OF NICE TREATY HAPPENING IN ERRON:

Referendum Commission Website: No FXXking mention of the following terms: Search Results No Documents Found for query "GATS WTO" Search Results No Documents Found for query "GATS" Search Results No Documents Found for query "wto"

Government Website: Very Little Mention xcept from ATTAC who have their submission sabotaged by the constant confusion of GATT and GATS:

Courtcase anyone?????

Chairman: The last contributor today is Mr. Conor O'Brien from ATTAC. You have five minutes to make your submission and questions and answers will follow later.

Mr. O'Brien: [Gaeilge from 7.49 to 7.56]. If I can be forgiven for resorting to sound bites, my message today would be, first, to wake up to the GATS, the General Agreement on Trade in Services, and the potential threat it poses to Irish public services, and second, it is time for the Tobin tax. That is the message; what about the messenger? I am from ATTAC Ireland, which is the association campaigning for the implementation of the Tobin tax, which is the common name for the currency transaction tax. ATTAC would be one of the most prominent groups known collectively as the anti globalisation movement. I am not very happy with that label because this movement is perhaps the most internationalised movement in the world. It relies significantly on the technology of globalisation to do what it has done. I prefer to call it the international citizens' movement or the civil society movement.

ATTAC internationally has approximately 60,000 to 65,000 members. It started in France, following a now famous editorial by Ignatio Ramonet the editor of Le Monde Diplomatique. In Ireland we have approximately 100 members, with a hardcore of about four or five activists, who are all working full time outside of ATTAC. We are working on a fairly small level and we have no corporate funding. We campaign primarily on the Tobin tax and also try to draw attention to the potential threat posed by the General Agreement on Trade in Services.

The idea of the Tobin tax has been around for some time. In the early 1970s, Professor Tobin, who only died last week, first suggested the tax as a means of controlling instability on the currency markets following the breakdown of the Bretton Woods agreement. It was resurrected in the early 1990s, following the EU financial crisis and has since become the flagship proposal of the International Citizens' Movement. At first, it was widely dismissed as entirely impracticable or utopian but, bit by bit, it has managed to work its way on to the agenda and it seemed to reach a critical mass of support last August - September when a number of politicians, including Prime Minister Jospin in France and Chancellor Schroeder in Germany, made positive noises about it, for whatever motivation. In the words of The Economist magazine, which does not like the Tobin tax "Like them or not, the anti-globalisation movement people have managed to change the agenda at the top."

At the ECOFIN meeting, under the Belgian presidency in September, it was on the agenda and that was really a significant breakthrough for the campaign. However, that meeting kicked it over to the Commission to prepare a report in the context of the report on globalisation. The Commission reported back in February, rehashing a lot of the arguments against the tax which the quite extensive technical literature rebuts, so it was disappointing to find that they were not coming up to speed on the very detailed technical literature. However, it remains on the agenda and there remains a very vibrant civil society movement campaigning for it. To date, the Irish Government has been particularly hostile, in that it feels that any perceived Irish support for the Tobin tax would be detrimental to Ireland's position against tax harmonisation.

For those not familiar with the Tobin tax, it is a proposed tax of between 0.1% to 0.5% of currency transactions and its beneficial effects would be two-fold. First, it would dampen down currency speculation and make less likely the occurrence of crises such as the Asian crisis of 1997 or the current Argentinean one, to which currency speculation has contributed significantly. Second, it would be a significant revenue raising tax which could be used to significantly address the most basic forms of global poverty. My main point is that the Tobin tax is the type of proposal the EU should be supporting. It is eminently practicable, it is a practical proposal to deal with the scourge of poverty and yet it is largely dismissed for, primarily, ideological reasons. It is a realistic proposal which has gained significant acceptance. The Labour Party has come out in favour of it, as have the Green Party, the SDLP and the French National Assembly. Fine Gael's position is somewhat uncertain but that party certainly has not dismissed it - its response has been quite thoughtful. The Government parties for, I submit, ideological reasons, are simply not entertaining it.

In relation to the general agreement on trade in services, this is a potentially far reaching agreement. It is one of 20 agreements under the World Trade Organisation which, inexplicably, has received virtually no coverage, either in the Dáil or among journalists. It commits the signatory states to a progressive liberalisation of public services and, again, a vibrant civil society movement is pointing out that this poses potentially very serious threats to public services. The WTO response is that it will not pose such a threat because there are clauses ruling out public services. However, the exemption is extremely ambivalent and the argument is that there will be a NAFTA on steroids. The GATT will be NAFTA multiplied by a significant factor, so that the cases we saw under NAFTA, whereby state attempts at regulating corporate activity for social ends were deemed illegal. It is a major concern and, if I may repeat, the lack of coverage on the issue is inexplicable.

Specifically in relation to the Nice Treaty, while the extension of QMV (qualified majority voting) is, of course, is justifiable on many grounds - when the membership is broadened, one has to engage in some kind of reformed decision making - but, in this context, in relation to GATT, QMV will remove Ireland's veto in relation to EU trade policy. Accordingly, the scenario is that Irish public services will be faced with possible corporate take-over, despite the wishes of the Irish people and despite the possible objection of Irish representatives at the EU. My two key messages are in relation to GATT and the Tobin tax. Sin a bhfuil. Go raibh maith agaibh.