The Nice Treaty and globalisation : A Guide to Article 133 and the Corporate Agenda

national | miscellaneous | news report Tuesday September 03, 2002 11:26 by Blisset (slight return)

Reposted from Global IRL Mailing List

In terms of the Nice treaty most of the 'action' is in one section, the changes to Article 133. It is therefore worth looking at that article in some detail and then looking at the origin of these proposed changes in corporate think tanks and lobbying groups.

The Nice treaty is a difficult document to read
and understand in part because it is a list of
amendments to already existing documents
including the European Union treaty itself. In
order to try to understand these you end up
flicking back and forth between growing
mountains of paper. This is probably part of the
reason why many activists remain unaware of its
central place in pushing capitalist
globalisation in Europe and its periphery.

There need not be anything surprising in this.
After all in North America it is widely
recognised that NAFTA and then the FTAA (Free
Trade Agreement of the Americas) were central to
this process in the Americas. For the last
couple of decades European corporations have
used the EU in a similar manner. In terms of the
Nice treaty most of the 'action' is in one
section, the changes to Article 133. It is
therefore worth looking at that article in some
detail and then looking at the origin of these
proposed changes in corporate think tanks and
lobbying groups.

Article 133

Paragraph 1 of Article 133 reads "The common
commercial policy shall be based on uniform
principles, particularly in regard to changes in
tariff rates, the conclusion of tariff and trade
agreements, the achievement of uniformity in
measures of liberalisation, export policy and
measures to protect trade such as those to be
taken in the event of dumping or subsidies."

Basically this means that what applies to one
country in the EU will apply to all countries,
there are no individual opt outs in these areas.
And some of these have major implications,
"uniformity in measures of liberalisation" for
instance translates from corporate speak into a
regime of privatization of public services
across the EU.

Paragraphs 2 and 3 give "The Council and the
Commission" power to negotiate agreements with
"with one or more States or international
organisations". Perhaps the most obvious
"international organisations" this will apply to
is the World Trade Organisation (although it is
not, of course, named in the treaty). The WTO
shot from obscurity to fame due to the massive
protests outside its conference in Seattle in
1999. The WTO itself admitted the importance to
it of the changes to Article 133 in it's June
2002 'Trade Policy Review of the European Union'
in writing "Of particular significance to the
WTO is the exclusive Community competence that
would apply to negotiations of agreements that
concern services (with certain exceptions), and
the commercial aspects of intellectual property
rights upon ratification by all Member States of
the Treaty of Nice."[i]

Article 133 will mean that the EU Council and
Commission will be responsible for the
negotiation of trade deals rather then the
national governments of the EU. Why would the
WTO be keen on this? Perhaps one clue is found
in the Seattle talks where "without consulting
and over the objections of civil society and EU
member states, the European Commission announced
its support for a Biotechnology Working Party,
causing 15 EU trade ministers to issue a joint
statement of disagreement"[ii].

This is what Paragraph 4 means when it says the
"Council shall act by a qualified majority."
This means that when an agreement is reached at
the EU Council all member states must go along
with it and cannot veto it. The 'qualified
majority' referred to are the new, complex
voting rules that will in effect allow the
powerful countries of Italy, France, Germany and
Britain (where most EU corporations have their
headquarters) to have a much greater say in what
decisions are made then the smaller ones.

This will also be relevant in forcing changes on
the populations of individual countries where
there is strong opposition to such change. The
capitalist globalisation agenda has met a lot of
resistance in Europe to date. In France cuts
required by the Maastricht treaty triggered a
general strike in March 1995. The largest
demonstrations had 3 million people on them. At
the time the international business magazine,
The Economist, warned "the danger in France was
not a change in government but the spectre of
1968: 10 million workers out on strike, riots in
the street and bourgeois society choking on its
croutons." All the European summits have been
accompanied by major demonstrations involving
over 100,000 people and there were significant
riots at the Nice Summit.

Resistance

After the general strike the French government
was forced to back down in many areas. This is
part of the reason why the method of decision
making being introduced by Nice means treaties
will be agreed by 'qualified majority' rather
then requiring the agreement of all the national
governments. This will allow national
governments that face large-scale opposition
over particular policies to maintain token
opposition and be 'voted down'. Under the new
'qualified majority' the French government could
have made a big deal out of publicly opposing
these changes, be outvoted at the EU council and
then shrug its shoulders and proceed to
implement them, saying it had no choice. Such a
strategy would remove some of the focus of
resistance at the national level.

Even with a populist government genuinely
opposing capitalist globalisation, these
policies can be pushed through. Providing this
opposition is limited to no more then one of the
large countries or several of the smaller ones.
Again the national government can wring their
hands and proclaim that they have no alternative
but to follow what has been agreed in Europe.

Paragraph 5 confirms the suspicion that the WTO
is one of the "international organisations"
being referred to as it makes it explicit that
these provisions "shall also apply to the
negotiation and conclusion of agreements in the
fields of trade in services and the commercial
aspects of intellectual property". These lay at
the heart of the Seattle round of WTO talks.
Services in this context includes essential
public utilities such as water delivery and
electricity generation and supply, in fact over
160 services have been named by the WTO.
Services also include postal services, finance
and banking, and telecommunications services.
The WTO agenda is to force privatization of such
sectors in particular by prohibiting public
funding or subsidies for them. And there is big
money to be made by the corporations here. In
2000 it was estimated that "Global expenditures
on water services now exceed $1 trillion every
year"[iii].

In discussing the treaty its important to note
that paragraph 6 excludes "agreements relating
to trade in cultural and audiovisual services,
educational services, and social and human
health services", these are not yet up for sale
in the same manner. Further on transport is also
excluded. This means that in theory individual
countries retain a veto on such agreements.
However what exactly is covered by these areas
will be determined by the European courts. It
may be, for instance, that catering or cleaning
in a hospital will be judged not to be a "health
service" and so may be open to compulsory
privatization.

These days of course the media often try and
present privatisation of public services as a
good thing. But consider when it inevitably
results in

1) The increased cost of services as the private
business seeks to maximise profits

2) A decreased quality of service for the same
reasons, in particular for those who for one
reason or another is less profitable or less
able to pay for the service

3) Job losses, speed-ups and longer hours for
those who work in providing these services.

Intellectual Property

The Intellectual Property referred to in Article
133 is not just the copyright of books and
records. It is also the patents owned by the
super profitable drug corporations. The WTO
grants them a global 20-year monopoly over the
drugs, which they develop, and provides for
trade sanctions against any country which
doesn't protect this monopoly. Just before the
last Nice referendum they attempted to use their
'Intellectual Property rights' to stop the
import of cheap anti AIDS drugs into Africa.
They backed down, for the moment, and in that
case alone, due to the public outcry and the
fact that the documents they would have had to
produce in court would have revealed the scale
of their profits to an already hostile public.

The attempt by the drug companies to do this was
deeply unpopular in Ireland. But 'qualified
majority' would have allowed the Irish
government to publicly oppose the drug company
agenda only to be outvoted at the EU council and
then be part of implementing sanctions against
these countries. In recent years the government
has become increasingly adept at the tactic of
saying one thing to NGO's or for public
consumption before implementing quite
contradictory policies. The Intellectual
Property provisions might also mean in the
future that medical companies would win the
'right' to buy patient related databases off
hospitals.

In summary Article 133 is designed to speed up
capitalist globalisation in particular by
allowing a 'qualified majority' of countries to
impose the EU agreements with the WTO. Within
the EU it will also speed up the process of
privatisation. It may have other consequences as
well. Biotechnology companies want to force the
importation of genetically modified foods into
Europe and even to outlaw the labelling of
foodstuffs to indicate they contain GM foods.
Under the WTO they have tried to claim that such
practises by the EU are anti free trade, it is
quite likely in the future the WTO will rule in
their favour (see for instance the WTO report of
June 2002 mentioned above).

Where does it come from

One obvious question is why is the Nice treaty
seeking to speed up corporate globalisation.
After all across Europe people have expressed
opposition both to this process in general and
to specific aspects of it like the introduction
of GMO's and the greed of the drugs
corporations. There have been massive
demonstrations outside all of the recent EU
summits over just these issues. Last march
500,000 demonstrated in Barcelona and in June
another 100,000 demonstrated in Seville. Why is
the EU not listening or rather whom are they
listening to?

The answer to this question is not such a
surprise. Across Europe in recent years various
scandals have demonstrated the national
governments are in the pockets of the
corporations and land speculators. In Ireland it
has been hard to keep track of the tribunals
investigating these? Why should we expect there
to be any difference at the level of the
European commission or council?

Indeed the forces that spend huge quantities of
cash 'lobbying' the EU make no secret of the
influence this brings. One of the most important
is the European Round Table of Industrialists
(ERT) which bring together over 40 "European
industrial leaders" [iv] from some of the major
European corporations. Ireland for instance is
represented by Michael Smurfit of Jefferson
Smurfit but most of the corporations are
household names across Europe and include BP,
Unilever, Carlsberg, Fiat, Vodafone, Volvo,
Philips, Nokia, Renault, Pirelli, ThyssenKrupp
and Shell.

Lobbying works

The ERT regularly produces lobby documents for
the EU bodies. Their recent 'Message from the
European Round Table of Industrialists to the
Barcelona European Council' complained of
"continuing resistance to liberalisation of
electricity and gas markets" and "too little
progress on pension reform" for instance.

And what do you know? The official 'Barcelona
European Council, 15-16 March 2002: Presidency
conclusions' include; on page 10 (pt. 25) "..the
European Council calls for the reform of pension
systems to be accelerated .."[v]. On page 15 (pt
37) it "urges the Council and the European
Parliament to adopt as early as possible in 2002
the pending proposals for the final stage of the
market opening of electricity and gas". Under
"Effective liberalisation - Electricity and gas"
on page 37 it reads "set an ambitious calendar
at the Spring Summit for [corporate] access to
free supplier choice."

Liberalisation as you are probably already aware
is corporate speak for privatization of public
utilities. But perhaps 'pension reform' sounds
nicer? Perhaps not, among the reforms demanded
by the ERT are ending "policies that push up the
costs of pensions, such as automatic links
between benefits and wages and encouragement of
early retirement."[vi]. As you may have noticed
we have not seen a referendum on whether or not
we would like to see an end to early retirement
or the breakage of links between pension
benefits and wages. The outcome of such a
referendum would be pretty predictable after
all, and unlikely to favor the bosses.

The endnotes of this particular ERT document
point out that the companies from which its
members are drawn have a combined turnover of
1350 billion Euro and employ 4.2 million people.
By way of a comparison southern Ireland near the
height of the boom in 2001 with a population of
3,840,838 had a GDP of $81.9 billion.

It's who you know

The ERT is fairly honest about the access it
enjoys to European politicians on its web page.
Under working methods it includes "At European
level, the ERT has contacts with the Commission,
the Council of Ministers and the European
Parliament. ...Every six months the ERT meets
with the government that holds the EU presidency
to discuss priorities. ... At national level,
each Member has personal contacts with his own
national government and parliament, business
colleagues and industrial federations, other
opinion-formers and the press."

But back to our old friend Article 133.
According to the Corporate Europe Observer at
the time of the Amsterdam treaty (1997) "the ERT
proposed that the power of the European
Commission to bargain on behalf of EU Member
States should be extended to all external
commercial issues, including trade in services,
investment and the protection of intellectual
property"[vii]. These of course are the areas
covered by the very revisions to Article 133 in
the Nice treaty!

Perhaps we are picking on the ERT too much? It's
also estimated that Brussels hosts some 500
industry lobby groups employing some 10,000
professional lobbyists. 1999 for instance saw a
multi-million Euro lobbying campaign by the
biotech companies which saw the introduction of
the industry friendly 'Patents on life'
directive. And returning to our old friend
Article 133 according to ATTAC - Ireland, "a BBC
"Newsnight" investigation revealed that industry
chiefs of the services lobby-group, the European
Services Forum, held exclusive meetings with the
EU's Article 133 Committee, which sets the
European Commission's trade policies. The
Article 133 Committee's deliberations are
supposedly confidential. All other social
partners, trade unions, Civil society NGO's,
small business organisations are excluded from
these meetings."[viii]

The message is clear. A substantial part of the
Nice treat, Article 133 has essentially been
drafted by the European corporations to increase
their profits at the expense of the people of
Europe and those we trade with. The nature of
these changes are things huge number of Irish
workers would oppose if they were presented in
plain English in a referendum. Yet not only are
they not presented in such terms in the treaty
in the last referendum the government appointed
Referendum Commission refused to even mention
Article 133 in its booklet for the last
referendum! Not is it mentioned in the EU
published guide 'What difference with the treaty
of Nice make'[ix].

It is clear that we cannot expect the EU, the
Referendum Commission or the media to explain
the corporate agenda behind the Nice treaty. If
you want this to happen then you will need to
join up with others to get the information out.
Anarchists will be campaigning against the Nice
treaty, if you would like to take part in the
organisation of this campaign or just receive
leaflets or posters to distribute email us at
[email protected] or ring/SMS us at 087
7939931.

Andrew Flood (Aug 2002)

Footnotes on web page at
http://struggle.ws/ireland/nice/analysis/corporate.html

More about the Nice treaty online at
http://struggle.ws/about/nice.html

Anarchist and libertarian groups and individuals
from all across Ireland are meeting in Dublin on
Saturday 7th September to found a campaign
against the Nice Treaty It will be at 14.30
hours in the Teachers Club, 35, Parnell Square,
Dublin on Saturday 7th September