Campaign to stop EU con-job on the GATS

national | miscellaneous | news report Tuesday January 07, 2003 23:45 by Donnacha O'Brien - ATTAC Ireland donnachao at hotmail dot com

Please take the time to read, and then foward this letter, to the European Commission regarding critical developments in the EU's handling of the ongoing negotiations for the WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). Please send to the addresses listed below before January 10th. Background information on these developments is available from the GATSWatch website. Please disseminate as widely as possible before January 10th. Thank You Attac Ireland

To be sent to the following Commission addresses and national Trade Departments (all addresses can be included in the same email):

· [email protected]
· Pascal Lamy: [email protected]
· J.Aguiar Machado, Head of Services Unit: [email protected]
· Mary Harney, Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment: [email protected]
· Copy to [email protected]

TEXT
ADD NAME
ADD ORGANISATION (IF RELEVANT)
ADD COUNTRY (VERY IMPORTANT!)
AND COPY TO MARY HARNEY, IRISH MINISTER FOR ENTERPRISE, TRADEAND EMPLOYMENT

Following the European Commission's release (12/11/02) of a consultation document on the on-going GATS negotiations, I would like to register my concerns.

The consultation document fails to give critical information about the requests that have come to the EU and fails to give key information about the current GATS negotiations. For example:

1. During the last set of GATS talks, the EU placed a critical condition on all of its service commitments which states that 'in all EC Member States' services considered as public utilities at a national or local level may be subject to public monopolies or to exclusive rights granted to private operators.' As explained by the EC itself (in a note next to this condition), this condition excludes public utilities from the GATS. However, key trading partners have requested that this condition be eliminated in the current negotiations. If this condition is watered down as has been requested, this could extend the GATS coverage into a number of key and sensitive sectors. Given the importance of this exclusion for public utilities, it is unacceptable that the consultation document does not mention it is being challenged.

2. In Educational Services (p.38) the requests made of the EU are of great public interest. Where European countries have made commitments to the GATS under education services, they have listed the condition that they only apply to 'privately funded education services'. While this precise definition is unclear, it potentially provides an exemption for the majority of EU education services, although this has never been officially confirmed. In the current negotiations, the EU is being requested to open up all education services completely to the GATS rules. This would include, for example, opening up key elements, which may cover public subsidies, to commercial, for-profit education providers. This would transform the provision of primary, secondary and tertiary education across Europe. This is a critical request and the fact that its significance is not clearly explained, questions the extent to which a real impression can be gained from the summaries presented in this consultation.

3. Much public concern about the current GATS negotiations focuses on the regulatory impacts of the agreement. This relates to ongoing negotiations on Domestic Regulation (Article VI.4) and the effect this could have on planning laws, for example. It also relates to attempts aimed at expanding the agreement to cover services directly contracted by governments (Government Procurement). The EC has already tabled positions and made its views known to industry on these aspects of the GATS. Why therefore is this not mentioned in the consultation?

Such omissions (and this is just a sample) demonstrate that the EC is not taking this process seriously. Therefore we are concerned as civil society members across Europe, about the seriousness with which our responses will be taken.

Given these flaws, the Commission must not in future use this 'one-off' consultation to claim that the public is adequately informed and participating in the current GATS negotiations. In addition to the above examples of omissions, the time frame for responding is too short and there is no clear indication of how submissions will feed into current EU decision-making. This is particularly relevant given the nature of the GATS negotiating process. For example, the consultation document draws on the 21 requests that were tabled at the time of the Commission's writing. Since then another 9 have been received. How does the Commission intend to inform the public about information in these later requests? Until the Commission releases actual negotiating documents, attempts such as this will be exposed for what they are: exercises in politics aimed at deflecting increasing public concern about the GATS and dissatisfaction with the undemocratic and un-transparent trade policy making.

The problems with this consultation have further emphasised the need for actual documentation to be made publicly available. To this end the following information must be put in the public domain:
· The 109 requests from the EU to other WTO members - tabled on the 4 July 2002;
· Requests received by the EU from other WTO Members - which were tabled after June 30 2002, and on which this consultation draws;
· The draft offers currently being prepared by the EC in consultation with EU Member States;
· The final offers that the EU makes in response to these requests - a process due to begin at the end of March 2003 and which will be ongoing throughout the current negotiations (due to end in January 2005).

This should be considered necessary action in view of responses received from around Europe, to this consultation exercise.

Furthermore, the little information presented in the Commission's paper causes further worry as it shows the huge scope of the current GATS negotiations, reaching into areas such as education, social services, broadcasting and cultural services, and postal services to name but a few. As the initial deadline for offers approaches, the Commission should not take a position on these critical issues without complete parliamentary and public scrutiny. This would entail improving democratic control through effective participation by citizens at the national level, increasing external transparency by making actual negotiating documents publicly available and developing effective mechanisms which ensure that trade negotiators incorporate more than business interests in their negotiating strategies. To this end, before negotiations proceed any further, there must be a thorough and independent assessment of these negotiations as mandated by the GATS itself.