http://www.bilaterals.org/article.php3?id_article=11033

No to corporate Europe - Yes to global justice!

Statement from Seattle to Brussels Network calling for joint strategies to halt current negotiations seeking to implement “Free” Trade Agreements (FTAs) between Europe and the rest of the world; and consolidating the struggles against European transnational corporations, and deepening the process of constructing alternatives, to reclaim the right to food, education, health and other basic services.

Seattle to Brussels Network | 25/01/2008

No to Corporate Europe - Yes to Global Justice!

As members of the Seattle to Brussels Network (S2B), we are calling for concerted efforts to roll back the strategy of the European Union called “Global Europe: Competing in the World”, the EU’s unfair bilateral trade agreements and corporate power. We also reject the false solution of unfair multilateralism and the EU’s proposals at the WTO, and a revival of the Doha Round in the exclusive premises of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

We, civil society activists engaged in a wide range of peoples’ movements and organisations in Europe express our opposition and resistance to the neoliberal trade and investment policies that the EU governments and European Commission are implementing in our countries and worldwide. Simultaneously, we are also building the alternatives.

Global Europe: Serving European corporations

In 2006, the European Commission (EC) unveiled its new Communication entitled “Global Europe: Competing in the World” which outlines how the EU will pursue bilateral trade agreements with major emerging economies in order to secure new and profitable markets for EU companies. While pushing for even more business-friendly ‘domestic reforms’, the EU sets out an aggressive so-called ‘external competitiveness’ strategy. As the EU Trade Commissioner puts it: “What do we mean by external aspects of competitiveness? We mean ensuring that competitive European companies, supported by the right internal policies, must be enabled to gain access to, and to operate securely in, world markets. That is our agenda.”

The core elements of this strategy are:

to resources (from agricultural commodities to energy)

New and better market access for European products

Rules securing European investments and intellectual property rights

In addition to the ongoing multilateral WTO negotiations, the EU seeks these objectives by negotiating bilateral free trade agreements with the so-called emerging economies such as India, South Korea, the ASEAN states, and also Central America and the Andean Region. Russia, the MERCOSUR countries and the Gulf Cooperation Council are also on the priority list of the EU. The goal of these bilateral or bi-regional free trade agreements is to open and deregulate developing country markets for European companies, to increase their access to natural resources, particularly to energy reserves, and to secure their profits by enforcing intellectual property rights and other trade defence mechanisms.

This strategy not only undermines regulation in target countries. It also clearly links EU internal deregulation to this agenda. It says, for example, that future directives on social, labour or environmental issues for instance, should not be threatening the global competitiveness of European corporations. In this way, Global Europe poses a serious threat to social justice, gender equality and sustainable development not only outside the EU, but also within. The erosion of workers’ rights, the worsening of the quality of jobs within the EU, the destruction of a sustainable model of farming is also intrinsically linked to the external EU trade agenda. With trade liberalisation across all sectors - agriculture, industry and services - the beneficiaries are a handful of corporations but millions lose their jobs.