The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership(TTIP) allows
corporations to sue governments technology writer, Glyn Moody claims.
This could happen when corporations think that there had been an
"indirect expropriation" of future profits through government action.
]A case in point
could be the British National Health Service(NHS) if it should be
privatized. Supporters of the TTIP point out that as it is now, the
Health Service will not be directly affected by the TTIP agreement. One
chapter of the TTIP is about the "investor dispute settlement" a
feature common to a number of free trade agreements. The section as
with many parts of free trade agreements is more about giving
corporations rights to override national laws than anything to do with
free trade. If a company thinks that it has lost future profits through
government action such as taking what is now private into the public
sector it can sue the government to recover those expected future
profits.
Already there has been some privatization within the NHS. Should a
future government try to reverse the privatization it could be
immediately sued by the private companies that would lose future profits
through this action. What the section does is basically lock in
privatization unless the government is willing to pay billions of euros
to settle any resulting lawsuits filed by companies that would lose
future profits in the process. From the corporate point of view the
provision protects them from any government that might want to reverse
privatization. However it also prevents governments from taking any new
sectors into the private sector, since any businesses who could claim to
lose future profits from taking services into the public sector could
use the provisions of TTIP to bring suit against the government.
The UK trade minister claims that those against TTIP are motivated by
dislike of America. However, there is the same concern about the
Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) an agreement between
Canada and Europe. There have also been concerns expressed about similar
provisions in the existing North American Free Trade Agreement {NAFTA)
between the US, Canada, and Mexico. The opposition to these types of
agreement has nothing to do with antipathy towards a particular country
but antipathy towards provisions that allow corporations to sue
countries when they democratically pass certain laws.
Even environmental regulations could be challenged as creating barriers to trade. This has already happened with NAFTA:
The “investor-state” provision of NAFTA’s Chapter 11 was innovative, allowing companies to bypass governments and court systems and sue for injury due to ‘indirect’ expropriation — harm to the present or expected interests — due to government regulation. As University of Victoria Law professor Chris Tollefson has pointed out, NAFTA vests “in essentially unaccountable tribunals the authority to constitute themselves as courts of appeal with powers to adjudicate key domestic legal issues.” In the recent suit of the Metalclad Corp against a Mexican municipality, “the Tribunal decided … that municipal governments have no right to insist that foreign investors address local environmental and public health concerns, even though this conclusion was strenuously disputed by the Mexican government.” (Choices, IRPP, March, 2003)
Both Ontario when Bob Rae was the NDP premier and more recently New
Brunswick campaigned for public auto insurance but neither went ahead to
carry out their promises even though four provinces already had
variations on this type of insurance before NAFTA came into force. Now
any attempt to implement such plans could result in lawsuits under
NAFTA. The suits might not be successful but just the threat of them has been enough to prevent any move to extend the popular insurance systems to other provinces.
This article sums
up the issue, noting that these free trade agreements give
corporations power to claim damages against countries that pass laws
that may harm their profits:
".. if you are a multinational corporation covered by NAFTA, or CETA if it gets put into place, then corporations have the right to go over the heads of government and courts, to an all powerful tribunal of trade lawyers and experts, three people who can ignore the decisions of Parliaments, courts, the Supreme Court, and give the company money for being so wronged by valid laws and strong systems of justice."The appended video below shows some of the other possible negative effects of CETA. A second video discusses the similar trade agreement for the Pacific Area the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP).
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