WikiLeaks Exposes Text from Secretly Negotiated TISA Trade Deal | News | teleSUR English
The
classified annex to the draft "core text" of the Trade in Services
Agreement is part of what is being secretly negotiated by the U.S., EU
and 22 countries.
The website WikiLeaks
released on Wednesday classified documents from the Trade in Services
Agreement, or TISA, which is a huge trade agreement being negotiated in
secret by the United States, the European Union and 22 other countries.
The documents
include a previously unknown annex to the TISA core chapter on "State
Owned Enterprises," which imposes unprecedented restrictions on SOEs and
will force majority owned SOEs to operate like private sector
businesses.
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The leaked documents show how stipulations outlined in the TISA
documents advanced the "deregulation" of big corporations entering
overseas markets.
According to the
leaked documents, the TISA rules would also restrict governments’
ability to determine the size or growth of certain economic activities
and entities, preventing nations from limiting the size of foreign
companies in the market.
"The TISA
provisions in their current form will establish a wide range of new
grounds for domestic regulations to be challenged by corporations – even
those without a local presence in that country," WikiLeaks warned on
Wednesday.
The whistleblowing website went on to note that the proposals and
language contained in the text promotes what it described as “the
corporatization of public services.”
There is growing
evidence that the privatization of state-owned companies leads to an
increase in costs for consumers. In the 34 OECD countries, for example,
the average price for energy charged by private companies is 23.1
percent higher than the price charged by public companies.
Despite these
alarming tendencies, the corporatization of public services is justified
in the name of improving efficiencies, especially by introducing
competition, WikiLeaks wrote in it’s analysis of the TISA annex.
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If the proposed TISA measures are approved, several civil society
organizations have warned of the potential impacts they may have on
national sovereignty and public safety.
The secrecy
around the deal and the negotiating process, which gives access to large
corporations but largely excludes civil society, has been criticized as
an assault on democracy.
The TISA documents are supposed to remain secret for five years after the deal is finalized.
The TISA is one
of three international trade deals being negotiated in secret, along
with the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, TTIP and the
Trans-Pacific Partnership, TPP, trade deal. Collectively, these
agreements encompass 75 to 95 percent of global GDP.
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WikiLeaks releases latest documents from TISA negotiations. | Photo: Reuters
