Referenda and TTIP (which would let companies sue governments)
Manchester Left Unity asks Left Unity to call for a referendum on TTIP and requests feedback on the wording of a proposed e-petition.
TTIP is a proposed “free trade” deal between the European Union and USA, including (particularly contentiously) the ability for companies to sue governments, even where the government’s legislation has been part of a ruling party’s election manifesto.
At Manchester Left Unity’s branch meeting on 9 July, we adopted a short motion including support for “the demand for referenda to take place, in all EU member states, on whether TTIP should be ratified”.
We discussed TTIP again at another meeting on 27 August, considering a more detailed motion linked to a draft e-petition to put pressure on MPs to grant such a referendum, assuming that the government doesn’t veto TTIP outright. We are calling for support from Left Unity nationally (via the National Council) and urging it to encourage other organisations internationally (particularly our sister parties in the GUE/NGL some of which have mass support) to use a similar strategy.
At the 27 August meeting, we agreed on the following motion apart from recognising that we couldn’t fully endorse it, since we didn’t have time to discuss the text of the e-petition (which was generally thought would be better if it was shortened) that the motion requests support for. The actual text used in the e-petition is particularly important, since it could make the difference of whether it gains mass support or fails to take off, hence posting it for discussion on the LU website.
The motion, as agreed on 27 August, is as follows:
Left Unity restates its outright opposition to TTIP as it presents and immediate and long term threat to both public services and to the limited democracy that the countries of the EU currently have.
At our Policy Conference on 29 March 2014, Left Unity committed itself to a high-profile campaign against TTIP as soon as possible.
National Council resolves that the high-profile campaign which Left Unity could take a lead in promoting would include the demands that:
- if the negotiations on TTIP proceed as far as producing a proposed treaty for ratification, the terms of that proposed treaty shall be fully disclosed publicly.
- the UK will insist that ratification of the treaty by the EU shall be dependent upon individual decisions to ratify taken in each member state.
- the UK’s decision upon whether or not to ratify TTIP shall be made by a referendum, after allowing time for the full terms of the treaty to be scrutinised by the general public and organisations in society.
National council further resolves to support Manchester Left Unity’s e-petition making the above demands, and to urge our sister parties across Europe in the GUE/NGL (as well as left-wing organisations in countries in the EU or USA where we do not have a sister party) to exert pressure on their governments with similar high-profile campaigns.
Such an approach would raise the central democratic issue of popular sovereignty and would be consistent too with the Policy Conference resolution on our European work.
The draft text of the e-petition is as follows:
This petition calls for a referendum to be required in the UK before ratification of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) treaty between the European Union and the USA. The petition forms the British contribution to am international campaign for referenda to be required in all EU member states and in the USA before TTIP is ratified.
We express our serious concern at the implications of TTIP which is currently being negotiated in secret between officials of the European Union and the United States, for our democratically determined social and environmental standards, for our public services, and for democracy.
The main goal of TTIP is, by the admission of the officials charged with negotiating it, to remove non-tariff, i.e. regulatory, ‘barriers’ which restrict the potential profits to be made by transnational corporations on both sides of the Atlantic. We fear that TTIP is driven by an agenda of massive deregulation and that workers’ rights, food safety rules (including avoiding genetically modified foods that are currently banned without even enforced labelling), regulations on the use of toxic chemicals and growth hormones in beef that have been linked to cancer in humans, the right to oppose fracking, digital privacy laws and even new banking safeguards introduced to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis, will all be in jeopardy. Moreover, we are aware that there is an intention to introduce a Regulatory Co-operation Council, from which corporate lobbyists will police the deregulation provisions of the treaty, identify new areas for deregulation, and review draft legislation before it is seen by EU legislators.
It appears that TTIP also seeks to create new markets by opening up public services and government procurement contracts to competition from transnational corporations, threatening to introduce a further wave of privatisation in key sectors such as health and education. Moreover, if investor protection measures are included within TTIP as expected, these will enable foreign investors to sue host countries for expected loss of future profits resulting from nationalisations (even if there is full compensation for shareholders).
Through the ‘Investor-State Dispute Settlement’ (ISDS) mechanism which is expected to be embedded within the treaty, TTIP would grant foreign investors a right to sue sovereign governments in front of extremely secret ad hoc arbitration tribunals for loss of profits resulting from public policy decisions. Even if ISDS isn’t included, companies could sue governments in national courts. Hence, it elevates transnational capital to a status above that of the nation state itself, and thus threatens to undermine the most basic principles of democracy in the EU and USA alike.
We call upon our Members of Parliament to press for Parliament to resolve that:
- if the negotiations on TTIP proceed as far as producing a proposed treaty for ratification, the terms of that proposed treaty shall be fully disclosed publicly.
- that the UK will insist that ratification of the treaty by the EU shall be dependent upon individual decisions to ratify taken in each member state.
- that the UK’s decision upon whether or not to ratify TTIP shall be made by a referendum, after allowing time for the full terms of the treaty to be scrutinised by the general public and organisations in society. If a referendum would be granted in situations whereby more power is given to the EU (as even Labour argues), it should surely happen with such a massive transfer of power to big business!
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8 responses to “Referenda and TTIP (which would let companies sue governments)”
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A very important issue for LU, and the Left generally, to campaign around. One would have thought that UKIP too ,with its focus on the “tyranny of the EU”, would be campaigning against this too. If they have been it’s certainly passed me by. So its a good issue to expose the “mock radical populism” of UKIP too.
Not everyone on the Right is ignoring it though – I saw an interview with the leader of the French National Front on Russia Today – in which the neo-fascist actually gave a very cogent critique of the TTIP – remarkably similar to our Left critique above . So let’s be in no doubt that if we don’t champion opposition to TTIP, the radical Far Right certainly will.
No UKIP are campaigning against it. A friend of mine refused to do her prearranged stint on an anti-TTIP stall in Devon because when she got their a prominent member of UKIP was also on the stall scheduled to be working the same slot… Maybe its different in different parts of the country
As the original proposer of the motion at the 27 August Manchester Left Unity meeting, although it was a collective effort (with other members helping write it before and at the meeting), I have just submitted it for consideration by the 20 September National Council – with the omission of the phrase “to support Manchester Left Unity’s e-petition making the above demands, and” in the paragraph after point 3.
Manchester LU will not meet again before the NC, but the branch in nearby Stockport will meet on Wednesday 10 September and hopefully agree an amendment to this motion, including submitting the text of an e-petition. Suggestions for improvements before then would be very welcome. [Obviously other branches will also have the right to submit alternatives for consideration by the NC.]
I’ve been campaigning for a referendum on TTIP since July and have created a page at http://www.facebook.com/TTIPreferenda calling for them across the EU and in the US, if a government is not prepared to veto it outright of course (which can even be viewed by people not on Facebook).
I thought TTIP was one of the problems of being a member of the E.U
Yes it is. After all, the European Commission (nominated by national governments) is nothing more than a convenient way to bypass national parliaments, especially when they want to impose what they call “unpopular” legislation (i.e. taking citizens’ rights away by stealth) and pass the blame on to someone else.
It has become something of a refrain in recent years, it happens every time some politician says “We had to do it! It’s EU law, so we (i.e. “you”) don’t have any choice”.
Therefore, the EU is not “reformable”, because there’s no will to reform it in any meaningful way on the part of the vast majority of European governments.
It is and will continue to be a vehicle for the neoliberal agenda, all the more insidious because it hides it behind a veneer of false progressiveness, emphasizing the importance of civil rights while downplaying economic and social ones.
Make no mistake, if we did manage to somehow prevail in the UK (either alone or as part of a Left coalition) they could and would hinder the transition to a Socialist economy, as it would be a direct attack on the interests they actually represent (i.e. big banks, international financial institutions, multinational corporations) and ir would create a dangerous (for them) precedent for other countries.
It can only be torn down and replaced with something different, which is already happening to some extent.
The choice we’re faced with is: do we want it to be shaped by the likes of the Front Nationale and UKIP, or do we want to do it ourselves, with help from other real leftist European parties (therefore excluding the likes of Syriza and Podemos)?
I have been surprised that the idea of campaigning for a referendum on whether TTIP should be ratified hasn’t grown legs before now.
After all, George Monbiot raised the point 10 months ago in a Guardian comment :
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/04/us-trade-deal-full-frontal-assault-on-democracy
I do think that a demand for a UK referendum and a call upon our sister left parties in EU member states to consider raising the same demand in their own countries is the best approach to the issue. This is because it counters the central issue of the anti-democratic nature of TTIP (and other current trade treaties uder negotiation, in particular the Canada-EU variant, CETA) with an assertion of the need for popular sovereignty and for full disclosure.
Without the referendum demand, then however militant the mass protest movement against these treaties becomes, it remains cast in the role of supplicant to the undemocratic bureaucracies which are negotiating these treaties and to the transnational corporations in whose interests they are acting.
Whilst the dangers of TTIP has had a lot of publicity this year, the Canada-US variant CETA ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Economic_and_Trade_Agreement ) has made it to the stage of completion of negotiations with much less attention, on this side of the Atlantic at least.
I think that there is a strong case for Left Unity to apply the principles of our 29 March 2014 Policy Conference resolution opposing TTIP, to CETA also and that we should take forward a demand for referenda on both of these treaties prior to ratification.
If UKIP is getting involved in opposing these treaties, then it becomes doubly important that we take a lead in building a high profile campaign aimed at the anti-democratic and neo-liberal capitalist impacts of the treaties, a campaign which is very clearly demarcated from the nationalist campaign of UKIP.
This briefing from WDM bears out why I think we should take CETA just as seriously as TTIP :
http://www.wdm.org.uk/trade/short-briefing-ceta
The unelected European Commission has blocked the registration of a European Citizens Initiative on TTIP. The ECI, if it reached (as it surely would have done) a minimum of 1 million signatures across the specified number of member states would have forced a debate in the European Parliament on citizen’s concerns about TTIP.
See John Hilary’s article on Yahoo at :
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/comment/talking-politics/outrage-as-eu-blocks-democratic-challenge-to-us-trade-122205307.html#UrXP0LP
I’ve posted the following comment :
“If the ECI has been blocked then I propose that we fight for referenda in each EU member state on whether TTIP and CETA should be ratified. The referenda to follow full public disclosure of the terms of the treaties to allow time for scrutiny by the general public and organisations in society.
The beauty of this approach is that it asserts popular sovereignty in the face of the anti-democratic behaviour of the EC bureaucracy and the failure of governments such as that in the UK to seek democratic mandates on these fundamentally important issues”.
I do hope that the Party National Council at its meeting on 20 September will support Manchester branch’s call for Left Unity to champion the demand for referenda.
In view of the recent revelations about the Canada-EU counterpart of TTIP, CETA, (which was, I am pleased to see, addressed in the resolution of the TUC Congress on Wednesday 10 September), perhaps the NC could itself amend the terms of the Manchester motion to address CETA as well as TTIP.