Not so Nice

Like many other voters, I have neither the time nor the knowledge to read and understand the text of the Nice Treaty. In the morass of contradiction surrounding the debate, I’m relying on experts who I know and trust to inform me on the treaty’s effects.

Barry Finnegan is an MA student of International Relations in DCU, lecturer in the journalism faculty of Griffith College Dublin, and a member of The Article 133 Information Group.

Barry has spent years studying the World Trade Organisation (WTO), international trade agreements, and the evolution of the EU Common Commercial Policy. Decisions made in these areas have massive, even life and death, effects on people globally. But they are written in a specialised language which most of us, including many of our politicians, find difficult to de-code. That’s why Barry and a group of like-minded citizens have made it their duty to set up The Article 133 Information Group in the run-up to the Nice vote.

According to the Article 133 Information Group, the Treaty of Nice is an effort to further the globalisation agenda of the world’s multinational corporations. It is designed to pave the way for EU endorsement of GATS – the General Agreement on Trade in Services – which is a commitment made to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as to what services the EU promises to privatise and de-regulate. It is also an attempt to hasten the process of TRIPS (Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights), whereby countries make a commitment to the WTO to reduce government intervention in intellectual property law, i.e. abandon regulation in areas such as GM foods, GM planting, medicine patents, computer software, music patents etc.

Once commitments to the WTO under GATS and TRIPS have been made, they are irreversible, and any disagreement over what they mean can only be interpreted by the WTO court. (Though the WTO is unelected, it is the highest law-making body in the world. WTO rules governing trade in goods, public services and intellectual property cannot be overruled by any court anywhere).

“The current, pre-Nice legal position,” says Barry Finnegan, “is that if we, the EU, are to sign a final version of the GATS and TRIPS, then it must be brought out into the open. We must be allowed to see the documents and the European Parliament must be allowed to have full consultation on the complete text of the GATS and TRIPS agreements. After the parliamentary consultation, the European Council of Ministers – the representatives of the (currently) 15 member states – must unanimously agree to accept the contents of GATS and TRIPS. In other words, countries have the right to veto.

“It is this process that allows accountability in our relationship with the WTO. These legal rules governing the democratic system of checks and balances in the EU are referred to as the Common Commercial Policy (CCP) of the EU. They are contained in Article 133 of the Treaty of the EU.

“But,” argues Barry, “Article 2.8 of the Nice Treaty completely overhauls the existing Article 133. After a ‘yes’ to Nice in Ireland, the contents of GATS and TRIPS – i.e. what we, the EU, are promising to privatise and deregulate – will remain a secret. The European Parliament and the public won’t be allowed to see the documents. They will be voted on by the Council of Ministers in secret through a qualified majority. Individual EU members will have lost their power of veto. And we won’t know the impact until companies come knocking on our door demanding privatisation and deregulation.”

According to this argument, if Nice were voted in, the way would be cleared for multinational corporations to buy up essential public services in Ireland and other EU countries.

The Irish government has argued that government services are exempted in the Nice Treaty. “In practical terms,” says Barry, “that apparent exemption is removed by another clause which mandates that such government services be ‘supplied neither on a commercial basis nor in competition with one or more service suppliers’. Since ‘commercial basis’ is not clearly defined, governments charging tax or fees could be interpreted as engaging in commercial activity. And essential services could be dragged into the free trade ambit.

“Since most societies have pluralistic service providers, government can be accused of being in competition with one or more service suppliers.

“A lot of the examples that we have of the real world implications of all this,” says Barry, “are coming from the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). For example, there’s a large US company suing the Canadian government right now, because they’re refusing to sell them the postal service.”

In defence of the globalisation agenda, there’s an argument that goes: So what if essential services get privatised? Won’t the competition drive standards up and prices down?

“There are no examples in the world of this,” says Barry. “They liberalised the electricity in California; since then there’s frequent black-outs and prices have quadrupled. The same thing happened in South Africa when they privatised the water. Prices rocketed.

“Last month the ESB said that from next January they’re going to increase the price of electricity by 13 per cent. And the reason for the increase, they said, was to make electricity more attractive to the private sector when it’s eventually privatised here.

“The record shows that where essential public services are privatised, the companies are after profits, they’re not after a quality public service. If they mess up, go bankrupt, get into financial trouble, who bails them out?” asks Barry. “The tax payer.”

Critics of GATS believe that one of the main reasons for the European Commission’s attempt to push it is to allow for the compulsory privatisation of water. If Nice were ratified, water would no longer be considered an essential human right, but a commercial product like any other.

“Since they privatised water in South Africa three years ago,” explains Barry, “a quarter of the people have been turned off. When water in Bolivia was privatised two and a half years ago, the price rose tenfold. People were spending half their average monthly salary on water services. There were large demonstrations and the government ended up re-nationalising the water supply.”

On the issue of enlargement, the Article 133 Information Group are fully in favour of the 12 candidate countries joining the EU and promoting a ‘truly democratic European Union.’ However, they feel that agreement on enlargement should not be saddled with encroachments on our economic and political freedoms.

“The reason both politicians and citizens are having difficulties interpreting the treaty,” says Barry, “is because it’s quite obviously about more than enlargement. It’s about more than the distribution of votes in the parliament, the council and the commission. It’s about a fundamental change in the internal democratic system of checks and balances of the EU. And it’s fundamentally changing our relationship with the WTO.

“If Nice goes through, the net effect will be that no matter who we vote into the Irish government, no matter who we vote into the European Parliament, none of those politicians will be able to make a commitment on services to the electorate, or make promises that certain sectors of service industries won’t be privatised. This is because we’ll no longer be in control of the negotiation process, we’ll no longer have a veto and our European parliamentarians will be excluded.

“Irish politicians are urging a yes vote because they believe that elected parliamentarians having a final say on international trade negotiations is inefficient. Ideologically, the way they look at it is, efficiency in trade negotiations must overrule democratic accountability. They genuinely believe that a reduction in government interference in business will be good for the economy and good for the people. It’s not a rational argument, it’s an ideological argument.

“If ideologically you believe that parliaments interfere with the efficiency of big business, then logically you should vote yes to Nice,” Barry concludes. “If you think that privatisation and de-regulation of essential public services is a matter for the Irish Parliament or the European Parliament to have a final say on, then rationally you must vote no.”