MAI mk2 - le monde diplomatique

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Wed May 12 08:10:22 PDT 1999


LE MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE - May 1999 http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/en/1999/05/13mai.html

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



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