Morning Star.png MEPs Told to Say No to Plans for Corporate Courts James Tweedie, The Morning Star, London, 6 July 2016 Public Sector unions urged MEPs yesterday to throw out the latest incarnation of anti-democratic corporate courts written into international trade deals. The Public Services International (PSI) said that the investment court system in toxic EU-US trade deal TTIP would undermine nations’ labour and health laws. It has sent its report into corporate courts to all MEPs, urging them to reject the EU’s “great corporate rebrand” of the insidious system, previously known as investor-state dispute settlement. PSI general secretary Rosa Pavanelli said: “The European Commission’s new investment court provides foreign multinational companies with the right to sue governments for making democratic decisions in the public interest.” Corporate courts Corporate courts would allow firms to sue governments for decisions that affect real or hypothetical profits — such as making laws against dangerous products or refusing to open public services to private competition. Although TTIP is being negotiated in secret, its corporate courts clauses have come under scrutiny by the European Parliament — resulting in some cosmetic changes. “Why are our governments giving rights to foreign corporations that local companies and local workers don’t have?” Ms Pavanelli asked. “Allowing the most powerful corporations on the planet to take taxpayers’ money is a recipe for increased austerity and cuts to public services.” The study reports the 2003 case of the Czech Republic being forced to pay a corporation £271 million, then the equivalent of the country’s health budget. Ecuador has just started paying £840m to a US-based oil company — 90 per cent of its welfare budget for 2015. From: http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-fe1a-MEPs-told-to-say-No-to-plans-for-c orporate-courts#.V3ycNvl9600 __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 13758 (20160705) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/yclsa-eom-forum/004901d1d752%24035d95d0%240a18c170%24%40com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
