Civil society opposition here has strengthened against a U.S.-proposed free trade zone that would include some dozen countries around the Pacific Rim.

As negotiators head into a 16th round of talks this week in Singapore, around 400 organisations are urging the U.S. Congress to demand greater transparency in the proceedings.

On Monday, the first day of the negotiations, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), a humanitarian group, called on President Barack Obama’s administration to “end its stall tactics and revise its proposals for what otherwise promises to be the most harmful trade deal ever for access to medicines in developing countries.”Look at who has a seat at the table, with the public shut out and more than 600 corporate lobbyists...

The Singapore talks will extend through Mar. 13. Critics say civil society and other critical stakeholders have been systematically shut out of the negotiations, supplanted by corporate interests.

The proposal, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), currently comprises 11 countries (a 12th, Japan, is also contemplating joining). But the Obama administration has been clear that if passed, the zone would be open-ended in terms of future expansion.

That broad geographical sweep, together with the simultaneous negotiation of a lengthy but highly secretive list of contentious issues not necessarily related to trade, is leading critics to warn that the scope of any pending agreement could negatively impact on nearly half the globe.

And with the Obama administration now saying it wants to wrap up the negotiations by October, some TPP negotiators are reportedly worried that some of the most controversial issues up for discussion are being pushed to the very end in an attempt to “run out the clock”.

According to a new brief released by MSF, U.S. TPP negotiators are pushing for rules that would “enhance patent and data protections for pharmaceutical companies, dismantle public health safeguards enshrined in international law and obstruct price-lowering generic competition for medicines”.

The result could be restrictions on access to affordable generic medicines for “millions” of people.

Judit Rius Sanjuan, U.S. manager for MSF’s Access Campaign, says her office heard that the last time the TPP negotiations included substantive talks on access to medicines was a year ago. At that time, nearly all negotiating partners reportedly rejected a draft chapter on intellectual property rights, which includes the patent provisions.

And while the White House has stated that it would be resubmitting a revised chapter on this issue, Sanjuan says it appears that access to medicines is once again not on the agenda this week in Singapore.

“We are hearing from other negotiating teams that the pressure to finalise this agreement by October is rising, and they fear that if there is not more time for substantive discussion, this chapter could stand,” she told IPS.

“We share the concern that this delay in presenting an alternative text is a U.S. strategy to focus instead on the less controversial chapters and leave behind debate over access to medicines. But doing so would have huge consequences for developing countries.”

In fact, imposing these types of new restrictions would run counter to previous international agreements and national legislation under which Washington has pledged to expand access to generic medicines.

Any restriction in access to such medicines would also affect the United States’ own global health goals. According to Sanjuan, generics make up some 98 percent of the medicines used by PEPFAR, the United States’ flagship anti-HIV/AIDS programme and the world’s largest.

Half the world

Global health wouldn’t be the only sector impacted by the TPP’s passage. Also on Monday, coinciding with the first day of negotiations in Singapore, around 400 groups from a broad range of backgrounds sent an open letter to the U.S. Congress opposing the abnormally secretive way in which negotiations for the trade area have been run.

“This agreement will impact on how trade and investment are conducted in the Pacific Rim for decades, yet the ramifications aren’t fully understood even by people who know about the TPP,” Arthur Stamoulis, executive director of the Washington-based Citizens Trade Campaign, an advocacy group, and an organiser of the letter, told IPS.

“This is an agreement that wouldn’t just affect the economy and sustainability in these 11 countries, but has the potential to impact the economy and environment for literally half the world.”

In lieu of official consultation, the groups are offering recommendations for draft language on issues from environmental standards and human and labour rights to financial regulation and national sovereignty. Yet the central complaint has to do with lack of oversight and transparency.

“We find it troubling that … U.S. negotiators still refuse to inform the American public what they have been proposing,” the letter states. “Shielding not only proposals but agreed-upon texts from public view until after negotiations have concluded and the pact is finalized is not consistent with democratic principles.”

The groups are calling for an opening-up of the talks to both the U.S. Congress and the public at large. They’re also urging lawmakers not to authorise new “fast track” powers that would allow the president to send Congress trade pacts for straight votes without the possibility of amendments.

Free trade advocates tend to suggest that such powers are necessary to get other countries to agree to large-scale trade agreements in the first place, but President Obama had allowed the “fast track” legislation to lapse. On Friday, however, the administration’s new trade policy agenda noted that the president would work with Congress to re-authorise that authority.

The administration has used similar concerns to rationalise the high level of secrecy surrounding the negotiations, saying that greater transparency would upset delicate discussions.

Yet critics point out that draft trade texts at this point in negotiations are often made public, including by the World Trade Organisation. Similar precedent exists from the Free Trade Area of the Americas, the trade zone agreed to in 2001 covering 34 countries, including the United States.

“There’s a real reason why the draft has been kept secret from the U.S. public – Americans wouldn’t support a huge amount of the agenda that the [Obama administration] has been pushing,” Citizens Trade’s Stamoulis says.

“If they were to negotiate an agreement that put human rights ahead of corporate profit, creating more just and sustainable social policy, the TPP could be a tool for incredible good. But if you look at who has a seat at the table, with the public shut out and more than 600 corporate lobbyists included, there is nothing to indicate that’s the deal we’re going to get.”

Days before leaders of the European Union (EU) arrived in Norway to collect this year’s Nobel Peace prize, Thai public health activists sent a letter to the northern powerhouse, warning that the EU’s 2012 accolades face a credibility test in this Southeast Asian country.

They had in mind the fate of Thailand’s generic drugs supply-line when Bangkok and the EU begin talks in early 2013 for a free trade agreement (FTA). The letter to Joao Aguiar Machado, deputy director general for trade at the European Commission, called for the bloc to respect global trade rules’ special provisions for developing countries.

The EU’s history of pressuring various developing countries around the world to comply with its conditions and requirements in free trade negotiations – which seek to remove all barriers to EU firms wishing to do business abroad – run “contrary to the expectations” of a Nobel Peace laureate, added the letter sent days before the Dec. 10 awards ceremony in Oslo.

“We are worried that the EU negotiators will force Thailand to accept new conditions on patents that would make access to new generic drugs more difficult,” says Chalermsak Kittitrakul, campaign officer at the AIDS Access Foundation. “People with HIV and patients needing medicines for cancer, heart disease and diabetes will have to pay more.”

“These clauses in a Thai-EU FTA would make it difficult for Thailand to produce or import generic drugs,” he told IPS. “It will pave the way for big pharmaceutical companies to monopolise the market and undermine generic competition.”

The EU is Thailand’s second largest trading partner after the ten-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). According to Thai officials, bilateral trade between the two partners stood at 35 billion dollars in 2010.

Thai activists want the negotiating text for the bilateral trade deal to stay within the bounds of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) law on Trade-Related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which was adopted during the groundbreaking international trade talks in Doha in 2001.

This provision permits developing countries with health emergencies to break the drug patents of pharmaceutical giants to either produce or import generic drugs.

But the FTA negotiations the EU has pursued with Thailand’s southern neighbours, Malaysia and Singapore, have raised concerns about what could lie in wait when the EU begins its bilateral trade talks with Bangkok next year.

“They (the Brussels negotiators) are pushing for TRIP-Plus demands such as data exclusivity,” says Paul Cawthorne, an officer with the Access to Essential Medicines Campaign launched by the global humanitarian agency Doctors Without Borders (known by its French acronym MSF).

According to a leaked document from a Thai trade negotiating team seen by activists here, there is a chance that the EU-Thai FTA could include five years of data exclusivity for new drugs, a clause designed to stop safety-related clinical test or trial data submitted to regulatory authorities from being used by the manufacturers of generic drugs.

“This will slow down the process to produce and supply new drugs to the generic market,” Cawthorne told IPS. “This blocking tactic using data exclusivity will have a broader impact because Thailand has been a producer of generic drugs for years.”

Data exclusivity is not currently required by international law, argues Cawthorne. “The TRIPS agreements require (WTO) member-states to protect clinical data, but there is no obligation to grant any period of monopoly or exclusivity in the use of these data.”

Thai health activists are hoping that their record of mounting successful campaigns against pharmaceutical giants – even from the United States – to ensure a thriving generic drugs market for patients in the country and across the region remains intact.

The last showdown was in mid-2007, when activists threw their weight behind the then Thai government to invoke a WTO rule to secure generic drugs.

In January that year, Bangkok issued a ‘compulsory licence’ (CL) to buy cheaper alternative antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) from India, bringing the country a reputation as another battleground for pharmaceutical giants determined to protect their intellectual property rights and profits from the generic drugs lobby.

Thailand, once one of the region’s countries worst hit by AIDS, is currently home to about 600,000 people with HIV, of which 200,000 people have access to first- and second-line ARVs from government hospitals.

Such ARV coverage has earned the country praise in the region, adding to a long list of achievements to contain the spread of the killer disease and care for those infected.

Issuing CLs has meant Thais with lung and breast cancer and heart disease have had access to cheaper generic drugs since 2007, the year that even saw the Thai push for generics being endorsed by the World Bank.

The Washington-based financial institution revealed in a report that the use of CLs in Thailand’s AIDS treatment programme would slash the cost of second-line drug treatments by 90 percent, helping the country to save an estimated 3.2 billion dollars over 20 years.

Such details are expected to fortify the current campaign. “It makes economic and public health sense for Thailand to strengthen its generic drugs supply and not expose it to TRIPS-plus measures,” says Jacques-chai Chomthongdi, research associate at Focus on the Global South, a Bangkok-based think tank.

“Activists want the process to include public participation to protect the interests of people who need generic drugs,” he told IPS. “They have received word that the EU is insisting that TRIPS-plus provisions be included as a prerequisite to the FTA talks.”

The poverty-stricken countries of Central America will face major challenges when the Association Agreement to be signed in late June with the European Union, including commitments on trade, political dialogue and cooperation, comes into effect.

“The region could benefit if all of its products, especially fruit and vegetables, other crops and some manufactured goods, are given privileged access” to the European market, Jonathan Menkos, an expert with the Central American Institute for Fiscal Studies (ICEFI), told IPS.

Menkos said this is the conclusion reached by impact studies carried out by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

Under the European Union-Central America Association Agreement (EU-CAAA), both sides will open their markets to industrial products from the other. This will primarily benefit the EU, which will be able to sell its vehicles and machinery in this region, and invest in services like finances, communications and transport, experts said.

Central America, on the other hand, will be able to take advantage of quotas for the sale of beef, rice, sugar and textiles to the EU, a market of 500 million people, and of other concessions for the sale of coffee, bananas and rum.

In Menkos’ view, “the success of the agreement depends on generating public goods in the rural areas of our region that are today almost non-existent, such as education, health, roads, highways and other infrastructure for trade.”

Half of Central America’s 43 million people live in poverty, which is concentrated in rural areas. Because of this, Menkos suggested, the region should also aim at other markets, such as South Africa, Russia, China or India.

The EU and the governments of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama signed the basic agreement in May 2010, after three years of negotiations. Now, following lengthy technical adjustments, the final accord will be signed this month.

Javier Sandomingo, head of the European Commission delegation to Central America and Panama, announced that the definitive agreement would be signed Jun. 28-29 in Tegucigalpa, when Honduras hands over the rotating presidency of the Central American Integration System (SICA) to Nicaragua.

After the signing ceremony, the European Parliament and the legislatures of the Central American countries must ratify the agreement for it to enter into force.

Francisco Robles Rivera of the University of Costa Rica told IPS that the EU’s aim is merely “to consolidate the legal framework for its investments in the region.

“This is important in the present context, when Spanish companies, especially in the energy sector, are being nationalised in the public interest in Bolivia and Argentina,” he said.

“The EU wants new legislation on investments to safeguard, expand and facilitate the operations of European capital in the region, especially in the fields of mining, and insurance, telecommunications, tourism and other services,” he said.

Virgilio Álvarez, of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO), told IPS that “unfortunately, all bilateral and multilateral trade agreements ultimately are of greatest benefit to the wealthiest partners, and are therefore asymmetric.”

Nevertheless, Álvarez said it was “important and necessary” to sign an association agreement with the EU. “It will allow us to move forward with Central American integration, and unlike the free trade agreement with the United States (DR-CAFTA), non-trade elements are included,” he said.

The EU-CAAA includes cooperation goals for the region, such as improvement of the situation of indigenous people, justice, security, protection of the environment, fighting climate change, and transport.

It also encompasses an agenda for political dialogue, seeking to promote a series of common values between the parties, such as respect for democratic principles and basic rights.

“We could expect Europe to bring the wealth of its experience to the Central American integration process, but this will depend greatly on our capacity to absorb that experience,” said Álvarez.

Other organisations, in contrast, view the Association Agreement with the EU as a serious threat to Central America.

“Europe gave higher priority to its trading interests than to its traditional economic cooperation for the consolidation of democracy, governance and development in Central America,” says the Mesoamerican Initiative on Trade, Integration and Sustainable Development (CID), a civil society organisation.

“Central America obtained meagre access quotas for agricultural products such as sugar, textiles, beef and rice,” whereas the EU “gained full opening of Central American markets for a wide range of key agricultural and industrial goods, such as dairy products, vehicles, medicines and machinery,” it says in a communiqué.

Moreover, on intellectual property, CID questions the major concessions granted to the EU in terms of protected geographical designations, patents and copyright: in the area of services, the bloc was granted complete access in the fields of finance, transport and energy, among others.

Meanwhile, “Central America has yielded ground in terms of workers’ rights and environmental protection compared with other treaties,” since “the agreement with the EU does not provide for penalties for those who infringe these rights for the sake of commercial interests,” says CID.

The EU is one of Central America’s main trading partners, but the EU is by far the stronger partner, with a trade surplus in 2010 of 5.2 billion euros (6.4 billion dollars) and sales to Central America worth 25.9 billion euros (32 billion dollars), according to the European Commission.

Marco Antonio Barahona of the Central American Institute for Political Studies (INCEP) told IPS that Central America still has a lot of work to do on integration in order to be able to face up to these trade challenges. “We have not even been able to create a customs union in our region,” he said.

Besides, “we mainly export products that Europe can do without, such as bananas, coffee and sugar, as opposed to oil, for example, which fuels the economy,” he told IPS.