Transcripts
"About the GATS"
by Linda Kaucher
The Despite the enormous global impact that the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) is set to have, there is still little public debate about this World Trade Organisation Agreement, even as it is being finalised. Signed up in a framework form in 1994, at the same that the World Trade Organisation (WTO) itself came into being, the GATS is likely to have much more impact on our world than the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which covers mostly agriculture and manufacturing.
The GATS will work towards the 'liberalising', or removal of any trade restrictions, on just about all 'services'.These services are included in the GATS: Business; Communications; Construction and Related Engineering; Distribution (including food distribution); Educational (all); Environmental (water, energy, refuse disposal); Financial; Health Related and Social; Tourism and Travel Related; Recreational, Cultural and Sporting; Transport (sea, air, road, rail, auxiliary); and, in case anything was missed.
Other services may be included in the 'general obligations' - that is the rules that apply to all services, under the Agreement.
While states are deciding which services they will commit at this stage, the pressure is on countries to progressively liberalise. The inclusion in this all-encompassing list means that all these 'services' will sooner or later, under the GATS, be opened up to privatisation, and Multinational ownership. The Agreement only goes in one direction - towards further privatisation.
The 'specific commitments' process is underway at the moment and Monopoly. Countries are currently 'requesting' services that they want other states to liberalise (deadline for requests - June 30th 2002), and then will offer what services they have decided to liberalise at this stage (deadline for offers- 31st March 2003).
Services committed as 'specific commitments' are subject to 'national treatment' which means that any Multinational company that bids must be given treatment as good as any national company, including any subsidies that a government gives to that service area. There must also be 'market access' which means, importantly, that no Government regulation can create any limitation to 'market access'. Thus Governments cannot legislate, without huge penalties, to benefit their populations, if it interferes with open access 'trade'.
There is also a push to have a broadband definition of a 'service' so that the same rules must be applied to everything within it. For instance the US wants all energy services lumped together in this way, and subject to the same liberalisation rules, including nuclear energy.
And there are no reversals. A safeguard provision that was supposed to be included, from the original drafting, allowing countries to back out of a service commitment in an emergency, has never materialised, and neither has the impact assessment. Developing countries signed up to the GATS, on the basis of these provisions.
All WTO members must abide by the rules of the Agreement, or face a challenge, adjudication by the WTO disputes panel, and possible sanctions. While sanctions imposed by a poor country on a rich state would not be an issue, even if a case were brought, the same is not true in reverse. In this way the Governments of rich countries, influenced as they are by Multinational interests, exert control over developing countries, and 'democracy', in the WTO.
The GATS poses a huge threat for the future of public services, globally. When asked, Governments such as the British Government assert that public services will remain public. However, according to the GATS, it is only services that are still wholly public that are exempt. If you look around, that doesn't leave much.The GATS is the means for Multinational companies to access the 40% of the global economy that Governments spend on social services - taxpayers' money.
The whole Agreement is due to be finalised during the next year or so. It could mean the take-over of all services, to the detriment, as we have seen, of those who cannot afford to pay and don't provide shareholders with profits, which is the priority in a privatised system. Inevitably services will go to those who are best able to pay - devastating to people in the developing world.
For countries such as ours it shows why the part-privatisation of the London Underground, hospitals and schools are being pushed through now, at any price, by a Government driven by the Multinational companies and the investment banks of the City of London. This driving force is seeking access not just to tax payers' money here, but around the world as liberalisation opens up 'investment opportunities' in peoples' basic services. Once the GATS is in place the fact of 'part-privatisation' will only serve to force the opening up to complete privatisation. Under the GATS, this would then have to go ahead even if we ever had a Government that cared.
Linda Kaucher
The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
London, February 2002
linda.k@start.com.au
© Friends Of Le Monde Diplomatique
