archives: WTO InfoPress release: EU/WTO: Campaign groups target untransparent and undemocratic trade negotiations
Friends of the Earth Europe and Corporate Europe Observatory
For immediate release 12 June 2003********************************************************************
While the EU is finalising its plans for the upcoming WTO Ministerial Conference in Cancun to be held later in Mexico in September, European campaign groups, including Friends of the Earth Europe and Corporate Europe Observatory have sharply criticised the EU's untransparent and undemocratic way of conducting trade negotiations. The criticism follows yesterday's reply (1) of EU Trade Commissioner Lamy to 3000 submission made by civil society groups and concerned individuals about the closed nature of the ongoing services negotiations in the WTO.
The Commission's reply yesterday comes 7 months after the EU's executive body had asked all involved stakeholders to submit comments on the EU's intentions to liberalise services and several months after the Commission has submitted its final position to the WTO.
The Commission consultation was organised following widespread criticism by NGOs from around the world about the secrecy of the services negotiations and the threats they pose for national environmental and social regulations and the provision of essential basic services including water.
Over 90% of the submissions were sent by campaign groups (2) to Pascal Lamy by mid February calling for the release of the draft negotiating documents and a full environmental and social assessment of the negotiations before proceeding with the negotiations.
In a press release issued yesterday, Lamy writes that “all the contributions received were taken into account” and attaches the final submitted document.
Alexandra Wandel of Friends of the Earth Europe commented:
'The EU should be a model for external transparency and civil society dialogue not a model for secrecy and closed trade negotiations. Several thousand submissions by civil society groups called for full transparency and access to the draft negotiating texts and a complete assessment of the trade negotiations. The Commission went ahead with their WTO submission ignoring our key demands. We are disappointed by the Commission's late and insufficient response'
Erik Wesselius of CEO said:
“Lamy's reply is like a bad joke. While the substance of the thousands of e-mails sent to the Commission has been clearly ignored, Commissioner Lamy now has the cheek to say that the consultation had a big impact on the content of the final EU GATS offer.
If there would have been a real impact, the Commission would not have issued its GATS offer on 29 April 2003, but instead would have pledged for a moratorium on the requests and offers phase of the GATS negotiations and withdrawn its far-reaching requests for services liberalisation in 109 countries, including its requests to 72 countries to open up their markets for drinking water services.”
ENDS
Contact:
Alexandra Wandel, FoEE, tel: 49 172 749 39 53 (mobile)
Erik Wesselius, Corporate Europe Observatory, tel: +31-20-236 4422Notes:
(1) "Reply from Commissioner Lamy to the submissions made in response to the public consultations launched in November 2002 in the DDA services negotiations". See bottom of this e-mail. Also available at http://europa.eu.int/comm/trade/services/rpldda_en.htm
(2) Corporate Europe Observatory's GATSwatch as well as many other groups including ATTAC and World Development Movement had organised a protest email that was sent by over 2500 groups and individuals see http://www.gatswatch.org/EC-consult.html
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