Nice requires states to open up public services to market

["John O'Neill" <johnfergaloneill@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Irish Times

Nice requires states to open up public services to market


  The treaty will enable multinational corporations to exploit the
privatisation of services such as education, health and transport, argues
Mick O'Reilly.

'People knew what they were voting for," was Charlie McCreevy's response to
the revelation that the Government had misled the public over the nation's
finances during the general election.

Never mind that the Fianna Fáil election manifesto didn't once mention the
need for massive public sector cutbacks. This is all part of a two-pronged
attack on the very idea of a public space where society can democratically
pool its own resources to provide services to enhance the quality of life.
It combines two fronts: a conservative domestic policy and the ongoing
liberalisation (read privatisation) of international economic relations, of
which the Nice Treaty is one more instrument.

On domestic policy, successive governments here have presided over some of
the worst public services in Europe. For decades we have lagged well behind
average EU levels of social investment, instead championing a low-tax
low-spend economic model based on an American model rather than any kind of
European experience. Keeping profits and wealth safe for the privileged few
has been the guiding light of successive Irish governments.

However, democracy has an inconvenient habit of edging into the debate.
People insist on services: health, education, transport, family support,
etc. Therefore, the Government is faced with a problem: provide public
services, with the knock-on effect on taxation and public expenditure or
find a mechanism to bring the corporate sector more into play. The Irish
electorate would never accept the wholesale privatisation of the public
sector, especially after the Eircom fiasco, any such programme could only
come through the back door. The Nice Treaty is just that back door, opening
up whole swathes of the public sector to private profit and multinational
competition.

Of course, the Nice Treaty does not have to state this objective so baldly.
It need only provide a more advantageous environment for multinational
corporations to pursue their agenda. The treaty, notably in article 133,
does just that. The General Agreement on Trades in Services (GATS) is a set
of international regulations that require national governments to open up
public services to the market. Its aim is to remove all internal government
controls over service delivery that are barriers to trade.

In effect, it is the framework for a global programme of privatisation. GATS
identifies 160 sectors to be subject to its rules, ranging from hi-tech
telecommunications to healthcare, education services and refuse collections.
It would make government actions to keep public control over these services
illegal.

This is the latest in a series of global agreements designed to deregulate
markets for the benefit of corporate interests. However, with GATS,
deregulation will occur in areas that have been predominantly served by the
public sector. This has led the World Trade Organisation to suggest that
nation-states "reconsider the breadth and depth of their commitments on
health and social services".

In specific reference to education, the WTO insists that "government
monopolies" are barriers to free trade. According to the European
Commission: "GATS is not just something that exists between governments. It
is first and foremost an instrument for the benefit of business."

THE Nice Treaty changes the way in which member- states negotiate and
approve such global agreements. It proposes that negotiation and conclusion
of international agreements on trade in services be conducted under
qualified majority (at present such negotiations are subject to the
unanimity rule).

There will be no co-responsibility with the European Parliament where one
could expect a more open debate. There will be no accountability to national
parliaments, no debate, no examination. Within the secretive world of the
European Commission far-reaching decisions will be made and presented in the
most technocratic manner.

We can see our future landscape in present-day laissez-faire America.

Rick Scott, the president of the world's largest hospital
corporation,Colombia, says that healthcare is a business just like the
ball-bearing industry. He is committed to destroying every public hospital
in North America, as they are not "good corporate citizens". Investment
houses such as Merrill Lynch predict that public education will be globally
privatised over the next decade with an untold amount of profit. To be fair,
at least they are open about their agenda, unlike our own Government.

The impact on the public sectors in Europe will be bad enough. In the
developing world it will be devastating. Already, many poorer countries are
dismantling their public infrastructures under rules imposed by the
International Monetary Fund, forced to abandon public social programmes to
facilitate multinational corporations to come in and sell their health and
education "products" to "consumers" who can afford them, leaving many
millions without basic social services.

Latin-American countries are experiencing an invasion of US healthcare
corporations and the World Bank is forcing the same countries to privatise
their water services, openly working with water giants such as Vivendi and
Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux, to establish their "rights" inside the Third World.

The Nice Treaty is not the beginning or the end of this process, but it is
an indispensable cog in the process and provides important cover.
Governments will be able to place the blame for the privatisation of public
services on Brussels, the WTO and any number of international agencies. They
will throw up their hands and say: "What can we do? It's their fault, not
ours."

But what they won't tell you is how we are getting there and, in the current
context, how the Nice Treaty facilitates that journey. They won't tell you
that running down the public sector is a necessary pre-condition for its
eventual privatisation (indeed, a vibrant, comprehensive and efficient
public sector is the best argument against liberalisation).

Some advocates of Nice, such as our own Minister for Finance, will just
declare: "People knew what they were voting for." Even though he refused to
tell them.



Mick O'Reilly is a trade unionist campaigning for a No vote in the Nice
referendum









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