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LE MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE - May 1999
TRANSATLANTIC WHEELING AND DEALING
Watch out for MAI Mark Two
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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 co
untries 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 Organ
isation.
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 fore
ign 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 agree
ments 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 negotiat
e 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 dero
gations 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 t
he 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 wit
h 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 pr
operty, 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 i
s 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 mainta
in 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, t
hereby 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 Sou
th 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 mar
kets 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 Lo
mé 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 exa
mples 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 va
lues" 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 a
n 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 R
ound. 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 stric
t 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, try
ing 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, th
e 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 li
st 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 a
n 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; s
pying 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 stat
e 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 virtuall
y 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 col
lapse 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 conflic
t; 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 o
n 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 b
eing 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, u
ltimately, 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.
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