[CTC] Wikileaks Release of Updated Secret Trade in Services (TISA) Documents in Advance of Next Round of Negotiations

Wed Jul 1 12:24:49 PDT 2015

July 1, 2015                                                

In Advance of Next Round of Negotiations on the Proposed "Trade in Services
Agreement (TISA)," Wikileaks Releases Updated Secret Documents 

Today, Wikileaks  <https://wikileaks.org/tisa/> released the most updated
draft texts on the proposed TISA, along with substantive analysis, on each
of four cross-cutting annexes: Domestic Regulation, the "Movement of Natural
Persons," Transparency, and a previously-unreleased annex on Government
Procurement. In addition they released the Core Text with accompanying
analysis and the agenda for the negotiations next week. The negotiating
texts are supposed to remain secret for five years after the deal is
finalized or abandoned. 

The documents, along with the analysis, highlight the way that the TISA
responds to major corporate lobbies' desire to deregulate services, even
beyond the existing World Trade Organization (WTO) rules. "This leak exposes
the corporate aim to use TISA to further limit the public interest
regulatory capacity of democratically elected governments by imposing
disciplines on domestic issues from government purchasing and immigration to
licensing and certification standards for professionals and business
operations, not to mention the regulatory process itself," said Deborah
James of the OWINFS network, which has coordinated global civil society
opposition to the proposed TISA since its inception. 

The Agenda indicates that other services will come under the jurisdiction of
the proposed TISA - including energy services, environmental services,
delivery services, and "patient mobility." 

"Given the added dangers of the recently-approved Fast Track provisions
which would apply to a potential TISA, we call on governments to abandon
negotiations on this corporate wish list and focus on strengthening public
interest regulation and the democratic process," James added.

"The Annex on Domestic Regulation is a serious threat to regulations that
people really care about - like what kind of development is allowed in their
neighbourhood or the standards for hospital care. Negotiators are using the
excuse that these regulations are somehow related to trade in order to
create a vast array of restrictions on the right to regulate," said Ellen
Gould, a Canadian - based consultant on trade agreements whose research
accompanies the Domestic Regulation Annex. The existence of an annex
restricting even non-discriminatory domestic regulations belies the claims
by some TISA proponents that the agreement is only about promoting
transparency and tackling discriminatory laws.

The existence of a Transparency annex in a secret trade agreement is itself
ironic. The annex shows that corporations are pushing far beyond how a
normal person understands "transparency." The sections on "prior
notification of new measures" would mandate that any measure (including
laws, regulations, agency rulings, etcetera) must be published in advance,
with a "reasonable opportunity" for corporations to comment on them to the
governmental entity. But it goes much further; the rationale for the measure
must be included, and governments must set up an avenue by which it must
respond to the comments. Some countries are even pushing for a mandatory
"judicial or administrative review of decisions," if corporation disagrees
with a proposed measure. This Annex, then, proposes a direct pathway for
foreign corporate input into the domestic policymaking process of
parliamentary and also local elected officials. 

Today's publication includes a previously unpublished annex on state
purchasing, which, according to analysis published by Wikileaks provided by
Sanya Reid Smith of the Third World Network, "would require extreme opening
of services government procurement (GP) of TISA countries, beyond the level
required by the optional rules at the WTO or in free trade agreements
involving the EU, U.S. or others. If accepted, this proposal is predicted to
undermine programs in developed and developing TISA countries that
facilitate development, help create local jobs and assist disadvantaged
communities including indigenous peoples and Small and Medium Enterprises
(SMEs)." 

The Annex on the "Movement of Natural Persons," called Mode 4, makes crystal
clear that immigration policy would be an integral part of the TISA,
notwithstanding certain governments' protestations to the contrary. A labor
lawyer with IDEALS in the Philippines, Tony Salvador said that "we oppose
trade agreements that include migrant workers, rather than just bona fide
service suppliers, as migrants should instead be protected by the domestic
labor and employment laws of the host country where they work. Having the
status of a worker/employee guarantees that she/he is also covered by ILO
Conventions," referring to the International Labor Organization. He added,
"however, the host country should maintain its prerogative to pass and
implement immigration and national security laws, and apply them to both
migrant workers and foreign service suppliers, even as the home country of
the migrants may continue to have laws that protect migrants from recruiters
and their purported employers in the home country."

The documents show that the TISA will impact even non-participating
countries. The TISA is exposed as a developed countries' corporate wish
lists for services which seeks to bypass resistance from the global South to
this agenda inside the WTO, and to secure an agreement on services without
confronting the continued inequities on agriculture, intellectual property,
cotton subsidies, and many other issues.

Background Information

This leak justifies warnings from global civil society about the
privatization and deregulation impacts of a potential TISA since our
<http://ourworldisnotforsale.org/en/signon/international-civil-society-sends
-letter-governments-opposing-proposed-trade-services-agreeme> first letter
on the issue, endorsed by 345 organizations from across the globe, in
September 2013. At that time, OWINFS argued that "[t]he TISA negotiations
largely follow the corporate agenda of using "trade" agreements to bind
countries to an agenda of extreme liberalization and deregulation in order
to ensure greater corporate profits at the expense of workers, farmers,
consumers and the environment. The proposed agreement is the direct result
of systematic advocacy by transnational corporations in banking, energy,
insurance, telecommunications, transportation, water, and other services
sectors, working through lobby groups like the US Coalition of Service
Industries (USCSI) and the European Services Forum (ESF)." Today's leaks
prove the network's arguments beyond a shadow of a doubt. 

Today's leak follows others, including a June 2014 Wikileaks revelation of a
previous version of the  <https://wikileaks.org/tisa-financial/> Financial
Services secret text; the December 2014 leak of a U.S. proposal on
<http://www.ourworldisnotforsale.org/en/report/briefing-us-tisa-proposal-e-c
ommerce-technoloy-transfer-cross-border-data-flows-and-net-neutr>
cross-border data flows, technology transfer, and net neutrality (available
in English and Spanish), which raised serious concerns about the protection
of data privacy in the wake of the Snowden revelations; the February 5, 2015
release of a background paper promoting
<https://data.awp.is/international/2015/02/04/22.html> health tourism in the
TISA (available in English, French, German, and Spanish); and last month's
Wikileaks publication of  <https://wikileaks.org/tisa/> 17 documents on the
TISA. 

The TISA is currently being negotiated among 24 parties (counting the EU as
one) with the aim of extending the coverage of scope of the existing General
Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) in the WTO. However, even worse than
the opaque talks at the WTO, the TISA negotiations are being conducted in
complete secrecy. Public Services International (PSI) global union
federation published the first critique,
<http://www.world-psi.org/en/psi-special-report-tisa-versus-public-services>
TISA vs Public Services, by Scott Sinclair, in March 2014, and PSI and
OWINFS jointly published
<http://ourworldisnotforsale.org/en/report/owinfs-and-psi-releases-special-r
eport-trade-services-agreement-tisa> The Really Good Friends of
Transnational Corporations Agreement report on Domestic Regulation by Ellen
Gould in September 2014. A factsheet on the TISA can be found
<http://ourworldisnotforsale.org/en/report/why-trade-services-agreement-tisa
-dangerous-democracy-development-and-public-interest> here

and more information on the TISA can be found at
<http://ourworldisnotforsale.org/en/themes/3085>
http://ourworldisnotforsale.org/en/themes/3085. 

###

OWINFS is a global network of NGOs and social movements working for a
sustainable, socially just, and democratic multilateral trading system.
<http://www.ourworldisnotforsale.org> www.ourworldisnotforsale.org

-

Deborah James

Our World Is Not For Sale (OWINFS) network

 <http://www.ourworldisnotforsale.org/> www.ourworldisnotforsale.org

Stop the TISA! (the proposed Trade in Services Agreement)
<http://www.ourworldisnotforsale.org/en/themes/3085>
http://www.ourworldisnotforsale.org/en/themes/3085

Remove WTO Obstacles to Food Security!
<http://www.ourworldisnotforsale.org/en/themes/3084>
http://www.ourworldisnotforsale.org/en/themes/3084

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