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Conclusions of a statement by the Greens/European Free Alliance group of the European Parliament.
You can find the whole statement as well as a supporting document on their website http://www.greens-efa.org
Conclusions:- A Ten Point Reform Programme
The reasons for the Green Group's vote in 1994 against the establishment of the WTO are even more valid today. The politics of the WTO contradict the principles of our programme for a fair, ecological and social trade. Therefore we support the abolition of the WTO, as set out in the Global Greens Statement from Canberra. That is clearly a longer term strategy. In order to reduce the worst effects of the WTO in the short-term, we present the following proposals for WTO reform:
1.No Comprehensive Round of new multilateral trade negotiations on issues such as foreign direct investment, government procurement, 'transparency' or biotechnology to be commenced in Qatar. The unfinished business of implementing the Uruguay Round commitments on market access, technical assistance and capacity building and the introduction of institutional reforms have all to be satisfactorily completed without linkage to further new liberalisation measures. Where there are ongoing negotiations and reviews, as in the cases of the agreements on Agriculture, Trade in Services, Intellectual Property, there should be no further liberalisation until and unless the strategic objectives of these agreements have been re-written.
2.Each existing WTO agreement must be independently reviewed to provide an in-depth evaluation of its economic, social and environmental impact to date and re-oriented to place true sustainable development, including poverty reduction, as its primary purpose. The necessity tests in the Technical Barriers to Trade and other Agreements (which can be used to overturn governmental non-trade restrictions if they are judged by the WTO to be more trade-restrictive than strictly necessary to fulfil a legitimate objective) need to be replaced by sustainability tests. Social and ecological justice should precede economic and trade justification.
3.Public policy issues must be protected from attack by commercial trade agreements. In particular, areas such as health and safety, education, culture, energy, food and water security, social and public services, public transport, environmental and animal protection must not be subject to international free trade rules which over-ride non-trade policy objectives. Therefore priority must be given in international law to the application of multilateral Treaties and Agreements which protect social, labour, environmental and other non-trade issues, including any future agreement on the mandate and authority of a World Environment Organisation, so that international trade rules become subsidiary to them.
4.Fair Trade not Free Trade. Developing and least-developed countries, which make up a substantial majority of the WTO membership, must be given their rightful place in the trade network. They require continuing special and different treatment to take account of their relatively weak position in the international trading system. The concept of Fair Trade requires that trade rules should also recognise and respect fundamental human and workers' rights, including the rights of indigenous peoples. Local producers, particularly those who cultivate basic food commodities, should be guaranteed to receive an equitable price for their produce.
5.Meaningful democratic control of the WTO must be established. People must have the right to self-determination and the right to know and decide on international commercial commitments. Among other things, this requires that decision-making processes in negotiations and enforcement within international commercial bodies be democratic, transparent and inclusive (internal transparency) and that a genuine legislative scrutiny by elected representatives of member countries be established (external transparency). This means that the negotiating mandate for all trade deals should be explicitly set in advance by national or regional parliaments and that the results should be reported back to those bodies so that their conformity with the terms of the mandate can be judged.
The voice of civil society organisations and parliamentarians, as represented, for example, by the Porto Alegre World Social Forum, must be heard.
6.Reform the Agricultural Priorities. Reform of the objectives of the Agriculture Agreement has to go hand-in-hand with reform of the EU's Common Agriculture Policy. They both need re-orientation away from the 'trade in quantity' approach towards a sustainable and integrated rural policy, emphasising the identity of local/regional food production and distribution and food/water security and sovereignty. It is extremely unlikely that this can be achieved in the WTO context and consideration should be given to transferring international responsibility for agricultural development to an independent forum, building on and developing the mandate and democratic structures of organisations such as the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome.
7.Human Needs cannot be treated as mere Commodities. The patenting of life forms including microorganisms must be prohibited in all national and international regimes in order to protect biodiversity, food security and local peoples' rights and to restrain private corporate access to and control over genetic resources; Article 27.3b of TRIPs must be renegotiated to achieve this. The right for farmers to re-use saved seed free from patent or other contractual restrictions must be re-established. Biopiracy or theft of traditional knowledge must be made legally actionable. The Trade-Related Intellectual Property Agreement (TRIPs) has also to be re-negotiated to allow governments to limit or deny patent protection on life-saving medicines in order to protect public health and safety.
8.The Disputes Settlement Mechanism needs to be removed from the auspices of the WTO and transferred to an independent or UN-supervised body, to avoid the WTO acting as both judge and jury in trade disputes. Respect for the principles of sustainable development must be at the forefront of all dispute settlements.
9.Reform the Economic and Trade Ethos. The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the regional development banks must convert the debts owed to them by poor countries into regional investment programmes for sustainable development. The use of structural adjustment programmes to force trade liberalisation on developing and emerging countries must be stopped. The emphasis thus needs to be moved away from considerations of pure competitiveness between nations, towards re-building local and regional economies across the world. Governments must negotiate, through the UN system and with full democratic participation, a binding and enforceable agreement to ensure that corporate conduct is socially and environmentally responsible and democratically accountable.
10.A moratorium is needed on further Plurilateral, Regional and Bilateral Trade Deals. Each of the dominant developed countries is now engaged in a race to tie up trade deals with a range of 'partners' (including non-WTO members) on all those trade issues which either remain outside the WTO agreements or where the agreements are regarded as too commercially weak, as in the case of the proposed FTAA rules on foreign direct investment or the EU's policy of imposing stronger intellectual property clauses on weaker trading partners.
Adopted by the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament on 27 June 2001.
THE GREENS/EFA in the European Parliament, Content Editor for this section: Jean KUTTEN.