Secret trade deals attack global health and environment
Ben Whitford
26th November 2013
The US is busy negotiating two sprawling new trade deals, with the European Union and 11 Pacific Rim nations, and progressives are up in arms. Ben Whitford asks: Just how bad are the deals?
It's impossible to say for sure: the talks have been shrouded in secrecy, and while hundreds of corporate bigwigs have been included in the negotiating process, potential critics - and even some U.S. lawmakers - have been denied access to the draft treaties.
Leaked fragments make one thing clear, though: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) aren't just about trade. Rather, they're an attempt to impose regulatory uniformity across the free-trade zones, making environmental, health and safety rules interchangeable among member nations.
Trade negotiators say that would strengthen regulatory protections, but activists aren't convinced. "It's difficult to see how you can have mutual recognition unless it's a race-to-the-bottom approach," Friends of the Earth Europe director Magda Stoczkiewicz told Reuters.
The TTIP and TPP would also give corporations an astonishingly powerful tool with which to further erode environmental protections: offshore tribunals, presided over by private lawyers, where firms would be able to sue governments for damages over any rules or laws that impacted their profitability.
To see what that means in practice, look to Ecuador, where Occidental Petroleum sued under an existing trade agreement when the government terminated its oil concession. Arbitrators last year awarded the energy giant a staggering $1.77 billion in damages - despite agreeing that Ecuador had been entirely within its contractual rights to end the deal.
Similar cases are now underway in Germany, where Swedish energy firm Vattenfall is seeking around €3.5 billion in damages over the country's decision to phase out nuclear power stations, and in Canada, where a US energy company is suing for $250 million over a Quebecois moratorium on fracking.
Corporations filed at least 514 such cases last year, up from just 38 in 1998, according to a TNI report, with firms winning about 30% of their lawsuits outright, and securing private settlements - often including big payouts - in hundreds more.
With governments facing an average of $8 million in legal fees to defend each case, it's feared that the expanded arbitration system envisioned under the TPP and TTIP could lead governments to preemptively water down environmental regulations rather than risk costly legal battles.
read on:
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2174552/secret_trade_deals_attack_global_health_and_environment.html
Love Always
mudra
Ben Whitford
26th November 2013
The US is busy negotiating two sprawling new trade deals, with the European Union and 11 Pacific Rim nations, and progressives are up in arms. Ben Whitford asks: Just how bad are the deals?
It's impossible to say for sure: the talks have been shrouded in secrecy, and while hundreds of corporate bigwigs have been included in the negotiating process, potential critics - and even some U.S. lawmakers - have been denied access to the draft treaties.
Leaked fragments make one thing clear, though: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) aren't just about trade. Rather, they're an attempt to impose regulatory uniformity across the free-trade zones, making environmental, health and safety rules interchangeable among member nations.
Trade negotiators say that would strengthen regulatory protections, but activists aren't convinced. "It's difficult to see how you can have mutual recognition unless it's a race-to-the-bottom approach," Friends of the Earth Europe director Magda Stoczkiewicz told Reuters.
The TTIP and TPP would also give corporations an astonishingly powerful tool with which to further erode environmental protections: offshore tribunals, presided over by private lawyers, where firms would be able to sue governments for damages over any rules or laws that impacted their profitability.
To see what that means in practice, look to Ecuador, where Occidental Petroleum sued under an existing trade agreement when the government terminated its oil concession. Arbitrators last year awarded the energy giant a staggering $1.77 billion in damages - despite agreeing that Ecuador had been entirely within its contractual rights to end the deal.
Similar cases are now underway in Germany, where Swedish energy firm Vattenfall is seeking around €3.5 billion in damages over the country's decision to phase out nuclear power stations, and in Canada, where a US energy company is suing for $250 million over a Quebecois moratorium on fracking.
Corporations filed at least 514 such cases last year, up from just 38 in 1998, according to a TNI report, with firms winning about 30% of their lawsuits outright, and securing private settlements - often including big payouts - in hundreds more.
With governments facing an average of $8 million in legal fees to defend each case, it's feared that the expanded arbitration system envisioned under the TPP and TTIP could lead governments to preemptively water down environmental regulations rather than risk costly legal battles.
read on:
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2174552/secret_trade_deals_attack_global_health_and_environment.htmlLove Always
mudra
