NAFTA and TEP will make WTO irrelevant
wytze (geno@zap.a2000.nl)
Wed, 29 Dec 1999 14:51:01 +0100
> > The WTO will be irrelevant as NAFTA creeps
> > across the Americas, Africa and then Europe.
> >
> >
> > "The world will consist of a single deregulated market,
> > controlled by multinational companies, in which no
> > robust law intended to protect the environment or human
> > rights will be allowed to survive."
> >
> >Still bent on world conquest
> >
> >Forget Seattle. Our ministers do what corporate lobbyists want
> >
> >World Trade Organisation: special report
> >
> >George Monbiot
> >The Guardian, Thursday December 16, 1999
> >
> >When the world trade talks in Seattle collapsed, British ministers
> >indicated that they would never again try to force the world to accept a
> >regime which threatened democratic government, developing nations and human
> >health. This is the third time they have made this promise: already, for
> >the third time, it has been broken.
> >
> >Eighteen months ago, when the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment
> >(MAI) first foundered, the British government assured us that it had
> >learned its lesson. The new treaty it was brokering would defend the
> >environment and developing countries. When that turned out to be untrue,
> >and the agreement collapsed again, ministers swore that the environment and
> >human rights would be central to any future treaty. Within a fortnight,
> >leaked documents show, European officials had decided to shift the entire
> >MAI agenda to the world trade summit in Seattle. They did so and, exposed
> >and divided at the beginning of this month, they failed. Again, they waited
> >less than a fortnight to launch the next attempt to facilitate a corporate
> >takeover of the world. At the Helsinki summit of European leaders last week
> >the fallback scheme began to be implemented.
> >
> >European expansion has several potential benefits for the people joining
> >the European Union - democratisation, human rights and peaceful relations
> >with their neighbours - but these are not the main issues driving
> >enlargement. The growth of the EU is one of the two central projects
> >formulated and controlled by a shadowy lobby group which has, for the past
> >15 years, exerted an iron grip on policy-making in Brussels.
> >
> >The European round table of Industrialists (ERT) is an alliance of the
> >chief executives of Europe's largest companies, whose purpose is to
> >formulate policies for adoption by the European Commission. It has, so far,
> >been astonishingly successful. The Single European Act was framed not by
> >the EC but by Wisse Dekker, the president of Philips and subsequently
> >chairman of the ERT. His proposal became the basis of the EC's 1985 white
> >paper. The ERT has scheduled and steered the implementation of the act ever
> >since. The enlargement plans just approved by the European heads of
> >government were mapped out by Percy Barnevik, head of the Swedish company
> >Investor AB and chairman of an ERT working group.
> >
> >The round table insisted not only that the EU be expanded in precisely the
> >sequence agreed at Helsinki, but also that new entrants be forced to
> >deregulate and privatise their economies and invest massively in
> >infrastructure designed for long-distance freight. The EU has agreed to all
> >of its principal demands. Until July this year the British minister
> >responsible for approving these changes was Lord Simon. Before he became a
> >minister, Lord Simon was vice-chairman of the ERT.
> >
> >The thinking behind these schemes becomes clear when you discover what else
> >the corporate lobby groups have been doing. Since 1995, the EC, pressed by
> >the ERT and other trade bodies, has quietly been preparing for a single
> >market with the US.
> >
> >The Transatlantic Economic Partnership is a slower and subtler creature
> >than the World Trade Organisation or the MAI. One by one it aims to pull
> >down the "regulatory barriers" impeding the free exchange of goods and
> >services between Europe and America. What this will mean in practice is
> >that once a product has been approved in one part of the new trading bloc,
> >it must be accepted everywhere. If the US government, for example, decides
> >that injecting cattle with growth hormones is safe, Europe will have to
> >adopt that as its regulatory standard.
> >
> >The master plan is now falling into place. A greatly expanded Europe will
> >form part of a single trading bloc with the US, Canada and Mexico, whose
> >markets have already been integrated by means of the North American Free
> >Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. NAFTA will grow to engulf all the Americas and
> >the Caribbean. The senate has already passed a bill (the Africa Growth and
> >Opportunity Act) forcing African countries to accept NAFTA terms of trade.
> >Russia and most of Asia are being dragged into line by the International
> >Monetary Fund.
> >
> >Before long, in other words, only a minority of nations will lie outside a
> >legally harmonised neoliberal world order, and they will swiftly find
> >themselves obliged to join. By the time the world trade agreement is ready
> >to be re-negotiated, it will be irrelevant, for the WTO's job will already
> >have been done. The world will consist of a single deregulated market,
> >controlled by multinational companies, in which no robust law intended to
> >protect the environment or human rights will be allowed to survive.
> >
> >As the previous failures to impose such plans have shown, schemes like this
> >can survive only in the dark: exposure makes them shrivel and die. If this
> >new global master plan is to be thwarted, we must drag it into the light.
> >
> >George Monbiot
> >The Guardian, Thursday December 16, 1999
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > .............................................
> > Bob Olsen, Toronto bobolsen@interlog.com
> > .............................................
>
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