WTO plant Abschaffung parlamentarischer Macht über Wirtschaft

Die WTO plant dem Observer (brit. Tageszeitung) zufolge eine internationale Stelle, die ein Veto-Recht über parlamentarische
Entscheidungen besitzen soll. Nach dem (ursprünglich geheimen) FTAA-Abkommen, das unter anderem bereits
Konzernen die Möglichlichkeit gibt "über" den Gesetzen eines einzelnen Staates zu stehen wird hier eindeutig klar,
worum es der neoliberalen Globalisierung geht....

Wer es nicht glauben will - hier der Link:  http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4170472,00.html

Hier der Text (Übersetzungen willkommen):




Necessity test is mother of Gats intervention

The World Trade Organisation has plans to replace that outmoded political idea: democracy

Sunday April 15, 2001
The Observer

Trade Minister Dick Caborn says 'nothing' all day, and this keeps him very, very busy. Caborn
is busy reassuring the nation that nothing in the proposed General Agreement on Trade in
Services (Gats) threatens Britain's environmental regulations. Nothing in Gats permits American
corporate powers to overturn UK health and safety regulations. Nothing in Gats, which is part
of the World Trade Organisation regime, threatens public control of the National Health
Service. The official statement of what Gats doesn't do goes on for pages and pages.

So I've been perplexed by Caborn and his EU sidekick, Pascal Lamy, rushing to Geneva and
Washington and God knows where else to argue over the wording of rules that do nothing,
change nothing and mean nothing.

But then last week 'something' came through on my fax machine. And this confidential
document from the WTO Secretariat, dated 19 March, is something indeed: a plan to create an
international agency with veto power over parliamentary and regulatory decisions.

When Winston Churchill said that 'democracy is the worst form of government except all those
other forms that have been tried from time to time' he simply lacked the vision to see that in
March 2001, the WTO would design a system to replace democracy with something much
better: Article VI.4 of Gats. And this unassuming six-page memo, now modestly hidden away
in secrecy, may one day be seen as the post-democratic Magna Carta.

It begins by considering the difficult matter of how to punish nations that violate 'a balance
between two potentially conflicting priorities: promoting trade expansion versus protecting the
regulatory rights of governments'.

Think about that. For centuries Britain, and now almost all nations, has relied on elected
parliaments, congresses, prime ministers and presidents to set the rules. It is these ungainly
deliberative bodies that 'balance' the interests of citizens and businesses

Now kiss that obsolete system goodbye. Once Britain and the EU sign the Gats treaty, Article
VI.4 of that treaty, the Necessity Test, will kick in. Then, as per the Secretariat's secret
programme outlined in the 19 March memo, national parliaments and regulatory agencies will
be demoted, in effect, to advisory bodies.

Final authority will rest with the Gats Disputes Panel to determine whether a law or regulation
is, in the memo's language, 'more burdensome than necessary'. And Gats, not Parliament, will
decide what is 'necessary'.

As a practical matter, this means nations will have to shape laws protecting the air you breathe,
the trains you travel in and the food you chew by picking not the best or safest means for the
nation, but the cheapest methods for foreign investors and merchants.

Let's get down to concrete examples. The Necessity Test has already had a trial run in North
America via inclusion in Nafta, the region's free trade agreement. Recently, the state of
California banned a petrol additive, MBTE, which has contaminated water supplies. A Canadian
seller of the 'M' chemical in MBTE filed a complaint saying the rule failed the Necessity Test.

supplies. A Canadian seller of the 'M' chemical in MBTE filed a complaint saying the rule failed
the Necessity Test.
The Canadians assert that California could simply require all petrol stations to dig up their
storage tanks and reseal them - and hire a swarm of inspectors to make sure it's done
perfectly. The Canadian proposal might cost Californians a bundle and would be impossible to
police. That's just too bad. The Canadian proposal is the least trade-restrictive method for
protecting the water supply. 'Least trade-restrictive' is Nafta's Necessity Test.

If California does not knuckle under, the US Treasury may have to fork out $976 million in
compensation to the Canadians.

The Gats' version of the the Necessity Test is Nafta on steroids. Under Gats, as proposed in
the memo, national laws and regulations will be struck down if they are 'more burdensome than
necessary' to business. Notice the subtle change. Suddenly the Gats treaty is not about trade
at all, but a sly means to wipe away restrictions on business and industry, foreign and local.

So what 'burdensome' restrictions are sitting in the corporate cross-hairs? The US trade
representative has already floated proposals on retail distribution. Want to preserve Britain's
green belts? If some trees stand in the way of a Wal-Mart superstore, forget it. Even under the
current, weaker, Gats, Japan was forced to tear up its own planning rules to let in the retail
monster boxes.

The Government assures us that nothing threatens its right to enforce laws in the nation's
public interest. Not according to the 19 March memo. The WTO reports that, in the course of
the secretive multilateral negotiations, trade ministers agreed that a Gats tribunal would not
accept a defence of 'safeguarding the public interest'.

In place of a public interest standard, the Secretariat proposes a deliciously Machiavellian
'efficiency principle': 'It may well be politically more acceptable to countries to accept
international obligations which give primacy to economic efficiency.' This is an unsubtle
invitation to load the Gats with requirements that rulers know their democratic parliaments
could not otherwise accept. This would be supremely dangerous if, one day, the US elected a
president who wanted to shred air pollution rules or, say, Britain elected a prime minister who
had a mad desire to sell off the rest of his nation's air traffic control system.

How convenient for embattled chief executives. What elected congresses and parliaments
dare not do, Gats would require. Under the post-democratic Gats regime, the Disputes Panel,
those Grand Inquisitors of the free market, will decide whether a nation's law or a regulation
serves what the memo calls a 'legitimate objective'.

While parliaments are lumbered with dated constitutional requirements to debate a law's
legitimacy in public, with public evidence, and hearings open to citizen comment, Gats panels
are far more efficient. Hearings are closed. Unions, as well as consumer, environmental and
human rights groups, are barred from participating - or even knowing what is said before the
panel.

Is the 19 March memo just a bit of wool-gathering by the WTO Secretariat? Hardly. The WTO
was working from the proposals suggested in yet another confidential document also sent to
me by my good friend, Unnamable Source. The secret memo, 'Domestic Regulation: Necessity
and Transparency', dated 24 February, was drafted by the European Commission's own
'working party', in which the UK ministry claims a leading role.

In a letter to MPs, Trade Minister Caborn swears that, through the EC working party, he will
ensure that Gats recognises the 'sovereign right of government to regulate services' to meet
'national policy objectives'. Yet the 24 February memo, representing the UK's official (though
hidden) proposals, rejects a nation's right to remove its rules from Gats jurisdiction once a
service industry is joined to the treaty.

Indeed, the EC document contains contemptuous attacks on nations claiming 'legitimate
objectives' as potential 'disguised barriers' to trade liberalisation. Moreover, there is a codicil
that regulation must not be 'more trade restrictive than necessary', ready for harvesting by the
WTO Secretariat's free market fanatics.

Not knowing I had these documents in hand, Caborn's office this week maintained that Gats
permitted nations a 'right to regulate to meet national policy objectives'.

I was not permitted to question the Trade Minister himself. However, the Caborn letter to MPs
admits that his pleasant interpretation of Gats has not been 'tested in WTO jurisprudence'.
This is, after all, the Minister who, with his EU counterparts, just lost a $194 million judgment to
the US over the sale of bananas.

Now, I can understand how Caborn goofed that one. Europe argued that bananas were a
product, but the US successfully proved that bananas were a service - try not to think about
that - and therefore fall under Gats.

And that illustrates the key issue. No one in Britain should bother with what Caborn thinks. The
only thing that counts is what George W Bush thinks. Or, at least, what the people who think
for Bush think.

Presumably, Caborn won't sue the UK for violating the treaty. But the US may. In a way it
already has. Forget Caborn's assurance - we need assurance from President Bush that he
won't use Gats to help out Wal-Mart - or Citibank or Chevron Oil.

The odd thing is, despite getting serviced in the bananas case, Caborn and the Blair
government have not demanded explicit language barring commerce-first decisions by a Gats
panel. Instead, the secret 14 February EC paper encourages the WTO's Secretariat to use the
punitive form of the Necessity Test sought by the US.

So there you have it. Rather than attack the rules by which America whipped Europe, Caborn
and the EC are effectively handing George Bush a bigger whip.