[E-rundbrief] Info 929 - EU trade policy hits poor

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 929 - Seattle To Brussels Network (S2B): ‘EU trade
policy hits poor’. Human rights and environment cited. European
politicians today face calls to change trade policies which, campaigners
say, harm people in developing countries and the environment.

Bad Ischl, 22.6.2010

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

www.begegnungszentrum.at

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Stop the EU's Corporate trade agenda

The Seattle to Brussels Network is part of Our World Is Not For Sale,

www.ourworldisnotforsale.org


NEWS PEG: Tuesday, 22 June 2010 Brussels  EU trade commissioner
discusses new EU trade strategy to European Parliament trade committee.

‘EU trade policy hits poor’

Human rights and environment cited

European politicians today face calls to change trade policies which,
campaigners say, harm people in developing countries and the environment.

The pressure comes as EU trade commissioner Karel De Gucht meets the
trade (INTA) committee of the European parliament to discuss future
policy in Brussels.

Trade justice campaigners working together in the “Seattle to Brussels
Network” (www.s2bnetwork.org ) call upon the Trade Committee to
radically review the current trade policy. This is the first consultation
with the European Parliament before the European Commission
releases its revised strategy in October.

In spite of its “sustainable development” rhetoric, EU trade
policy-making remains untransparent and geared towards serving the
interests of EU businesses above all other considerations.

The current trade strategy paper “Global Europe, competing in the world”
adopted in 2006, makes economic self interest the cornerstone of EU
trade politics. In the past few years EU trade policy has shown little
concern for:

* human rights: by launching and concluding trade negotiations with
dictators, like Mugabe, and accepting weak and watered-down human right
clauses.

* labour rights: by concluding negotiations with Colombia, a country with
numerous human rights abuses and regular killings of trade unionists.

* rule of law and democracy : by concluding negotiations with the coup
government Honduras, in spite of the fact that the EU recognised that
the post-coup elections in Honduras were flawed

* regional integration: by pushing for trade agreements with individual
countries of ACP regions, ASEAN and the Andean Community

* development: by ignoring the different levels of development in
Latin-American and Asian developing countries, including India and
overriding, the specific needs and constraints of African, Caribbean and
Pacific countries in the EPA negotiations

* food security: by pushing for access to poor countries’ markets for its
heavily subsidised agricultural products, without permitting adequate
safeguards to protect local farmers that rely on these markets to survive.

* access to medicine: by tightening intellectual property rights as in the
EU-Colombia/Peru negotiations, putting pharmaceutical companies profits
ahead of life-saving drugs

* the environment: by requesting countries to eliminate restrictions to
trade of raw materials, putting Europe s demand for raw materials above
sustainable development objectives and the sovereignty of peoples over
their national resources

* developing countries’ sovereignty and future development: ’locking in’
countries to policies and not letting them design adequate policies to
support and protect their own sustainable development

* transparency and consultation: by offering little or no information
about trade negotiations and little opportunity for real policy
dialogues and given proper feed back on civil society inputs.

* gender justice: by ignoring that trade policies have a different impact
on women and men due to the gender division of labour, in the market and
the household, and because of women’s and men’s different access to
resources and services. Instead they perpetuate already existing gender
inequalities and social exclusion

* its own Sustainable Impact Assessments, as these cannot change trade
policies but only inform possible  measures to alleviate the inevitable
heavy impacts on poor countries

* the opinion of European Parliament as this has no say in the mandate of
the trade negotiations and can only approve or reject trade agreements
as a whole

A consultation is currently open until the end of July for comments on
the new strategy. However, the consultation is highly leading and leaves
little space for criticism of the EC’s continuing emphasis on corporate
interests.

The Lisbon Treaty has made trade policy an integral part of the overall
EU foreign policy. It should serve the overall objectives of EU policy
including poverty eradication, sustainable development and human rights.
This can not be done by downgrading these objectives to ’desirable
extras’ but only by putting them right in the centre of the future trade
policy.

Information: Bruno Ciccaglione - Coordinator of the S2B Network -
+43 664 1475502

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Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
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