The
transatlantic trade deal TTIP may be dead, but something even worse
is coming
George Monbiot
Governments
and corporate lobbyists keep inventing new ways to embed
privatisation and circumvent democracy – in this case, the
Canada-EU deal
Tuesday 6 September
2016 19.23 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/06/transatlantic-trade-partnership-ttip-canada-eu
Is it over? Can it
be true? If so, it’s a victory for a campaign that once looked
hopeless, pitched against a fortress of political, corporate and
bureaucratic power.
TTIP – the
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – appears to be
dead. The German economy minister, Sigmar Gabriel, says that “the
talks with the United States have de facto failed”. The French
prime minister, Manuel Valls, has announced “a clear halt”.
Belgian and Austrian ministers have said the same thing. People power
wins. For now.
But the lobbyists
who demanded this charter for corporate rights never give up. TTIP
has been booed off the stage but another treaty, whose probable
impacts are almost identical, is waiting in the wings. And this one
is more advanced, wanting only final approval. If this happens before
Britain leaves the EU, we are likely to be stuck with it for 20
years.
The Comprehensive
Economic and Trade Agreement (Ceta) is ostensibly a deal between the
EU and Canada. You might ask what harm Canada could do us. But it
allows any corporation that operates there, wherever its headquarters
might be, to sue governments before an international tribunal. It
threatens to tear down laws protecting us from exploitation and
prevent parliaments on both sides of the Atlantic from legislating.
To say that there is
no mandate for such agreements is an understatement: they have
received an unequivocal counter-mandate. The consultation the EU
grudgingly launched on TTIP’s proposal to grant new legal rights to
corporations received 150,000 responses, 97% of which were hostile.
But while choice is permitted when you shop for butter, on the big
decisions there is no alternative.
It’s not clear
whether national parliaments will be allowed to veto this treaty. The
European trade commissioner has argued that there is no need: it can
be put before the European parliament alone. But even if national
parliaments are allowed to debate it, they will be permitted only to
take it or leave it. The contents are deemed to have been settled
already.
Only once the
negotiations between European and Canadian officials had been
completed, and the text of the agreement leaked, did the European
commission publish it. It is 1,600 pages long. It has neither a
contents list nor explanatory text. As far as transparency, parity
and comprehensibility are concerned, it’s the equivalent of the
land treaties illiterate African chiefs were induced to sign in the
19th century. It is hard to see how parliamentarians could make a
properly informed decision.
If you seek to buy a
secondhand car these days, the salesperson might wheedle and spin,
but they will also – thanks to EU consumer protection laws – be
obliged to explain the risks and caveats. If you want to know whether
or not to buy this trade treaty, you have no such protection. The
EU’s website tells you what a wonderful set of wheels this is but
carries not a word about the risks.
Here is its answer
to the question of whether the Ceta negotiations were conducted in
secret. “Not at all ... During the five years of talks, the
commission held various civil society dialogue meetings for
stakeholders.” I followed the link it gave and found that four
meetings had taken place, all of them in Brussels, all dominated by
corporate trade associations, which are likely to have been on the
inside track anyway. Where was the publicity? Where were the attempts
to reach beyond a gilded circle of lobbyists and cronies? Where were
the efforts to take the discussion to other nations? Where were the
debates, the drive to seek genuine public engagement, let alone
consent? If this is transparency, I dread to think what secrecy looks
like.
Like TTIP, Ceta
threatens to lock in privatisation, making renationalisation (of
Britain’s railways, say) or attempts by cities to take control of
failing public services (as Joseph Chamberlain did in Birmingham in
the 19th century, laying the foundations for modern social provision)
impossible. Like TTIP, it uses a broad definition of both investment
and expropriation to allow corporations to sue governments when they
believe their “future anticipated profits” might be threatened by
new laws.
Like TTIP, it
restricts the ways in which governments may protect their people. It
appears to prohibit, for example, rules that would prevent banks from
becoming too big to fail. It seems to threaten our planning laws and
other commonsense protections.
Anything not
specifically exempted from the agreement is considered covered. In
other words, if governments do not spot a potential hazard before the
hazard emerges, they are stuck with it. The EU appears to have
relinquished its ability, for example, to insist that investment and
retail banking be separated.
Ceta claims to be a
trade treaty, but many of its provisions have little to do with
trade. They are attempts to circumscribe democracy on behalf of
corporate power. Millions of people in Europe and Canada want to
emerge from the neoliberal era. But such treaties would lock us into
it, allowing the politics we have rejected to govern us beyond the
grave.
If parliaments
reject this treaty, another deal is being prepared: the Trade in
Services Agreement, which the EU is simultaneously negotiating with
the US and 21 other nations. Theresa May’s government has expressed
enthusiasm: her Department for International Trade says: “The UK
remains committed to an ambitious Trade in Services Agreement.” So
much for taking back control.
Corporate lobbyists
and their captive governments have been seeking to impose such
treaties for more than 20 years, starting with the Multilateral
Agreement on Investment (it was destroyed, like TTIP, by massive
public protests, in 1998). Working in secrecy, without democratic
consent, they will keep returning to the theme, in the hope of
wearing down our resistance.
When you are told
that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, this is what it
means. This struggle will continue throughout your life. We have to
succeed every time; they have to succeed only once. Never drop your
guard. Never let them win.
• A fully linked
version of this article can be found at Monbiot.com
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