TRANSATLANTIC WHEELING AND DEALING
Watch out for MAI Mark Two
Sheltered from the hubbub of war and crisis, Europe, the
United States and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) are
devising agreements that will remove the final obstacles to the
free play of "market forces" and require countries to submit to
the unfettered expansion of the multinationals. Learning from
the failure of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI),
big business and technocrats are trying to force through a
decision before the end of 1999.
by CHRISTIAN DE BRIE *
The corpse of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) hardly had time to
get cold in the vaults of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) (1) before the ultra-liberal Dr Jekylls led by Sir Leon Brittan, the outgoing
European Commission vice-president and Thatcherite die-hard, have tried to clone
it, excitedly hoping to see new Draculas emerge from their test tubes by the year
2000.
This urgent work is being carried out in two secret laboratories with "keep out" signs
to deter anyone not wearing a lab coat: the Transatlantic Economic Partnership (TEP)
and the Millennium Round of the World Trade Organisation.
The first of these, which opened on 16 September 1998, is dedicated (though it will
not admit it) to that favourite project of the British and the Americans - seeing the
European Union dissolved in a free trade area with the United States. Following the
failure of the first attempt in 1994, a rehashed version presented by the European
Commission on 11 March 1998 under the name NTM (New Transatlantic Marketplace)
was thrown out by the foreign ministers of the Fifteen on 27 April.
As he had done before, Brittan went back to his drawing board (without seeking a
mandate) to come up with a disguised version of his pet scheme. If the 27 pages of the
Commission recommendation on the negotiation of agreements in the field of
technical barriers to trade between the EU and the US (2) are anything to go by, the
outcome promises to be instructive. (An abbreviated version was approved by the
Council, empowering it to negotiate on behalf of the member states, then by the
European parliament in September and November 1998).
On the pretext of removing "technical barriers to trade", which include health, social
and environmental protection regulations, the ultimate aim is to "reach a general
commitment to unconditional access to the market in all sectors and for all methods
of supply" of products and services, including health, education and public contracts.
In the inimitable jargon of the Commission, states and local authorities are required
to make all derogations explicit in the form of "a negative freedom" given that the
agreements negotiated apply to all the territory of the parties, regardless of their
constitutional structures, at all levels of authority. This is very restrictive for the
local authorities of the European countries, but of little risk to the US, where the
federal states are not bound by Washington's signature in the matter.
The aim is gradually to draw up common minimum regulations "based on the
recommendations of enterprises" in order to "create new outlets" for them - all this in
"a spirit of conviviality". Involved in the TEP talks from the outset, the multinationals
have greatly influenced the content thanks to a powerful lobby that has been
institutionalised for four years: the Transatlantic Business Dialogue (TABD) bringing
together the upper crust of big business on both sides of the North Atlantic. Its last
two-yearly meeting took place in Charlotte (North Carolina) in November 1998.
Big business to call the tune
In order to allay suspicion, they are trying to rush through the establishment of a
Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue, a Transatlantic Labour Dialogue and a
Transatlantic Environment Dialogue for consumers, trade unions and ecologists
respectively, who will have to stay firmly within the bounds set by big business in the
TABD. The latter has no intention of giving anything more than a half-hearted
commitment to optional codes of conduct with no sanctions attached.
Thus "hemmed in", talks proceed behind closed doors, using salami tactics to avoid
alerting public opinion, so that everything can be sewn up by December 1999.
Industrial goods, services, public contracts, intellectual property, etc. - in a dozen
fields, slice by slice, "mutual recognition agreements" (MRA), apparently technical
but in fact political, seek to reduce standards and regulations to the lowest common
denominator. The outcome is that the safeguards that Europe has built up, in food,
the environment and health in particular, are being dismantled.
Once agreement has been reached, governments will be obliged to abolish any laws
that conflict with the MRAs. And it is no surprise to find that the procedures will
consist of meetings "at cabinet level in order to maintain political impetus" and
between "top officials assisted where necessary by ad hoc or specialist groups" who
will take care of everything together with consultants from the world of business.
Talks conducted behind closed doors without democratic control aim for a hastily
signed final agreement: the TEP follows the same aims as the MAI - to hand over all
human activities to capital, without let or hindrance, thereby stripping the EU,
member governments and local authorities of their ability to pursue their own
policies, be they economic, social, cultural or environmental.
But the document signed at the London transatlantic summit on 18 May 1998 has
another aim: to establish a US-EU condominium capable of imposing its will on the
rest of the world, and in particular the countries of the South in the talks due to open
at the WTO in December. The war being prosecuted, with the support of their
governments, by transnational corporations on both sides of the Atlantic for the
conquest and domination of world markets is becoming increasingly brutal and has
no regard for laws. Witness America's extraterritorial Helms-Burton and
D'Amato-Gilman acts that are contrary to international law; the banana war lost by
the EU despite the Lomé agreements that are no longer worth the paper they are
written on; the disputes over hormone-contaminated meat and genetically modified
organisms (GMOs) that contravene health regulations, to name only a few recent
examples that have made the headlines.
For example, the US food industry organisation Grocery Manufacturers of America
has decided to challenge the European "eco-labelling" directives and other consumer
protection legislation said to reflect "local cultural values" and be discriminatory in
terms of international competition (3). It is precisely the role of the MRAs negotiated
under the TEP to settle such disputes in the best interests of business, even if the
agreement makes an ass of the EU (4).
Encouraged by the work of his first laboratory, the insatiable Brittan, far from being
content to deal with the outgoing Commission's current business, is actively
preparing for the success of the second: the Millennium Round. The idea is to convert
the meeting of the ministerial conference of the 131 WTO member countries in Seattle
in December 1999 into an enormous globalisation fair, where the removal of the final
obstacles to capital's freedom of action would be negotiated pell-mell. Without any
prior decision to that effect, public contracts, competition, product controls and
investment would be added to the initial agenda for the revision of the 1994
Marrakesh accords on agriculture, services and industrial property. In other words,
it is the MAI Dracula.
In the case of intellectual property and farming, for example, this would mean
absolute compliance with patent rights in seed, especially soya and transgenic rice, in
which American corporations hold a monopoly, and strict limits on member
countries' rights to hold buffer stocks against the risk of famine. In the case of public
contracts, foreign firms would have the same rights as national ones for all local,
regional and national public contracts, with the contract going to the most "efficient".
In competition matters, countries would no longer have any control over public
purchase offers and mergers. In the name of trade facilitation, controls in ports and
airports would be restricted to one sample or container. For investment the
proposals are the same as the MAI, except for arbitration.
The multinationals intend having their way in everything: apart from the
Transatlantic Business Dialogue and the European Round Table of Industrialists, a
new lobby , the Business Investment Network, is hard at work. The Seattle meeting
looks set to be a Millennium Merry-Go-Round; come next June, the International
Chamber of Commerce will be rallying public opinion in its support, while Sir Leon
Brittan will be touring Southeast Asia, trying to win over such recalcitrant countries
as India, Pakistan and Indonesia. But, crisis-stricken and closely dependent on the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), most countries of the South will put up little
resistance. The scene seems to have been set in advance for the US and the EU to call
the tune.
The WTO's negotiating methods and practices lend a hand here. Countries are
supposed to submit their lists of requests, concessions and requests for debate by the
end of June 1999. After that, the WTO's executive body, the General Council, will
work behind closed doors planning the content and proceedings of the ministerial
conference. The details of the agreements will be worked out in a large number of
informal meetings (not even the list of participants will be published) and the silence
of the weakest countries will be taken to signify acceptance.
"Transparency", "deregulation", "liberalisation", "opening of markets", "good
governance" are only matters for countries and their citizens, never for large
corporations. There is no draft international agreement to put an end to what is
common practice in the jungle of big business: secret agreements and cartels,
dumping and transfer price manipulation; speculation and insider dealing; financial
crime, tax evasion and money laundering; spying and piracy; surveillance and
exploitation of workers, banning of trade unions; plundering and embezzlement of
collective resources and common property, endemic corruption of economic
channels, major markets and state machinery.
So there seems to be nothing to prevent the transnational corporations taking
possession of the planet and subjecting humanity to the dictatorship of capital.
Almost all of them are based in the most powerful countries of the North (the US,
Canada, the EU, Japan) where large-scale mergers and concentrations continue apace
with the unconditional support of governments and international bodies given over
to their cause. Controlling virtually all the means of information and communication,
they meet with only localised and sporadic resistance as they compete relentlessly
for monopoly control of the markets.
Making people submit to the implacable logic of profit is now the only policy of the
great powers and the organisations they control, especially the OECD, IMF and WTO.
The havoc they cause is terrible and they do it with impunity: accelerated
impoverishment and destruction of the social structures of entire populations, who
are deprived of the most basic rights, driven from their homes and left fighting for
survival; the weakest state collapse under the weight of structural adjustment
policies and debt, unable to guarantee their people's security or provide a minimum
of working public services. The consequences are a return to barbarism and ethnic
conflict; ever more crises bringing plummeting living standards and soaring
unemployment (5); a widespread increase in inequality and poverty, even in the
supposedly richest countries, especially that shop window of liberalism, Tony Blair's
Britain (6).
In order to crush any thought of organised resistance to the supporters of this new
world order, tremendous police and military forces are being used to establish a
doctrine of repression: poverty itself is made a crime on the domestic front just as
recalcitrant states are internationally vilified (7).
Able in a few hours to find the billions of dollars necessary to save from bankruptcy
the few robber barons who have eaten their fill at a speculative fund (LTCM), these
new master of the world cannot spare even one tenth that amount to provide over a
billion human beings with clean drinking water, even though 25,000 people die
every day for want of it (8). They are streaks ahead of the tyrants of the Middle East,
the Balkans or elsewhere, against whom we are regularly roused to great
humanitarian tirades. "Water is life!" proclaims Vivendi (formerly Générale des Eaux)
in a lavish advertising campaign, building its wealth on organising its scarcity.
In the urgency of the situation, resistance is being organised to meet the forthcoming
onslaught. Drawing on the experience of the successful fight against the MAI, an
international campaign of information and action is being organised and coordinated
with the support of the trade union, social and community movements and questions
are being asked of elected representatives (9). The immediate aim is a moratorium on
all trade talks with, ultimately, supervision of the transnationals, the establishment of
an international economic court of justice and the "deratification" of the agreements
already signed. This is not to forget reform of the WTO which operates in permanent
violation of the basic principles of democratic societies.
* Observatoire de la mondialisation (Globalisation watch)
Translated by Malcolm Greenwood
(1) See "A dangerous new manifesto for global capitalism" by Lori M. Wallach, Le
Monde diplomatique in English, February 1998.
(2) "Recommendation for a Council decision, presented by the Commission"
(undated); and "Resolution of the European Parliament", Bulletin of the Communities
(COM.98.0125) and "Opinion of the Economic and Social Committee" (CES 1164.98).
(3) Testimony of a leader of Grocery Manufacturers of America to the US Senate trade
subcommittee, 28 July 1998.
(4) See Jean-Claude Lefort and Jean-Pierre Page, "Double jeu autour de l'AMI", Le
Monde diplomatique, October 1998; Jean-Claude Lefort, Europe-Etats-Unis: quelles
relations économiques?, rapport préliminaire, Assemblée Nationale, rapport
d'information No. 1150.
(5) To take just one example, the crisis resulted in 25 million people being made
unemployed in East Asia.
(6) "La Grande-Bretagne s'alarme de la pauvreté croissante et introduit le Smic
horaire", Le Monde, 31 March 1999.
(7) See Ignacio Ramonet, "Social democracy betrayed", Le Monde diplomatique in
English, April 1999.
(8) According to the World Health Organisation (Le Journal du dimanche, 4 April
1999)
(9) For more information, see "L'AMI cloné à l'OMC", pamphlet produced by
Coordination contre les clones de l'AMI, Observatoire de la mondialisation, 40, rue
de Malte, 75011 Paris.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © 1999 Le Monde diplomatique