TRADE: Anti-WTO Campaign to Centre on Services

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Dec 1 2000 (IPS) - The protests announced for next week in Nice, France, during the European Union (EU) summit, may serve as a preview of future campaigns against globalisation and trade liberalisation.

A march convened by European labour unions and civil society groups for Dec 6 is intended as a protest against the liberalisation of services, such as health, education and culture, outlined by the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

In Nice, the EU heads of state and of government are to discuss a new distribution of power among the bloc’s member countries, and among civil society organisations, including their authority to negotiate certain matters in the WTO.

The norms of the European bloc reserve specific issues in the area of trade policy, like services, investment and intellectual property, for the “shared responsibility” of the European Commission – the EU’s executive body – and the 15 member countries.

In these matters, as established in Article 133 of the Amsterdam Treaty that regulates the EU, the countries can veto the commitments made between the WTO and the Commission, which is currently presided by Italy’s Romano Prodi, and made up of 19 commissioners.

But the European official in charge of trade, the French socialist Pascual Lamy, and “the pressure groups consisting of transnational corporations – his allies – have high hopes” that the Nice summit will modify that article, according to writer Susan George, who heads the Globalisation Observatory.

If that occurs, the fight against neo-liberal globalisation will be forced many steps backwards, she warned.

Lamy’s intention, according to George, is to apply the same system of qualified majority the EU uses for taking decision on trade matters, such as those involving industrial goods, to the areas of services, investment and intellectual property.

Qualified majority is based on a distribution of votes according to the demographic weight of the 15 EU members.

Thus, France, Germany, Great Britain and Italy each have 10 votes, Spain follows with eight, Belgium, Greece, the Netherlands and Portugal each hold five, Austria and Sweden have four, Denmark, Finland and Ireland have three, and Luxembourg holds one.

This system of voting requires a majority of 62 votes to approve a given resolution, while 26 votes are needed to block any measure.

But Germany is attempting in parallel talks to ensure that leaders at the Nice conference revise the distribution of votes, recognising it as the most populous country of the EU and granting it more votes than France, Great Britain and Italy.

The two matters to be debated at the summit – the reform of Article 133 and the distribution of votes – are closely related to the uncertain future of the EU’s trade policy, and are a source of concern to the organisations involved in the planned march in Nice.

George affirmed that Lamy is developing a campaign so that the qualified majority will be applied to the three areas of services, investment and intellectual property.

The service sector includes health, education, audio-visual, transport, environment and public services. Intellectual property is currently a hot issue as far as genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

George, born in the United States and now a naturalised French citizen, maintains that the European Commission, which shares Lamy’s approach, “wants liberalisation right and left” at the WTO.

Michel Servoz, lead European negotiator in the services area, has said “health and education are ripe for liberalisation,” according to George’s mention in her political document “Red Alert.”

A WTO source, who requested anonymity, denied that the institution is discussing the matter of liberalising government- provided services.

But the source predicted that talks aimed at expanding the liberalisation of services, initiated in January, would become a target for the most staunch opposition of the WTO, such as the groups and individuals that disrupted its Ministerial Conference in the US city of Seattle a year ago.

George, in turn, predicts that if Lamy’s proposals succeed, the European Commission will be completely beholden to neo-liberal doctrines and the demands of the major industrial and financial corporations.

The protesters planning to march the streets of Nice next Wednesday will speak out in defence of the concept of public service, which the European Commission “intends to eliminate under the pretext of competition,” she stressed.