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| Demand 4: STOP THE GATS POWER-PLAY AGAINST CITIZENS The current Doha work program of global trade negotiations was to be geared towards the ‘development’ priorities of the Global South, reminds the S2B-network of NGOs: |
| Yet, enormous pressure is now being exerted on developing countries to open up their key service-markets to foreign-based and for-profit corporations in industrialized countries. The EU continues to demand from developing countries commitments in key sectors such as finance, energy, environment, water, tourism, distribution, postal and transport services. Yet, these just happen to be among the services sectors on which the European for-profit corporations are seeking to expand their global market reach. There is no evidence to suggest that opening up the services sectors to these foreign-based services corporations will enhance the development goals and priorities of developing countries.
The established experiences of services liberalisation-and-privatization give reason for people in the South and North to be concerned about diminishing access to essential services such as water, health, education, energy etc., including the deterioration of their quality, job losses, job insecurity, curtailment of workers’ rights, decline in real wages and increased demands in labour flexibility, since the protection of labour rights and promotion of core labour standards are increasingly being viewed as ‘protectionist measures or barriers to ‘free trade.’ Additionally, the GATS initially heralded for its flexibility, claiming that countries could elect whether to place services on the negotiations table or not, has proven essentially false. In order to secure the opening of developing countries services markets, the European Commission has taken the lead among those countries advocating the establishment of quantitative and qualitative benchmarks for the GATS negotiations, without even properly discussing such a step among the EU members. This will compel WTO-members to reach prescribed high levels of services liberalisation. The proposals on the table will in particular imply that developing countries will bear the large share of the commitments. At the same time the European Commission uses the benchmarking exercise to also set a high level of commitments to help enforcing from outside the EU internal services liberalisation. Demand 4 The EU must stop pursuing the introduction of benchmarks in the GATS market access negotiations. No selective 'benchmarks' or other changes in the negotiation process should be introduced which force developing countries to make precipitated commitments in specific sectors. A comprehensive assessment has to be conducted on the developmental, environmental, social, and gender impacts of the liberalization of services before proceeding with the current round of GATS negotiations. Essential services, such as water, energy, education and health, whose access is important for human development and women’s empowerment, must be excluded from the negotiations. Any continuation of service negotiations must be preceded by comprehensive national policy making processes involving all affected constituencies domestically and the public at large, and all requests and offers must be made fully public without delay. |
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