Serving Whose Interests?explores the political economy of 'trade in services' agreements from a critical legal perspective. Yet the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) also seemed a logical next step in the reorganization of international capital. The accompanying case studies provide different insights into how trade in service agreements can impact in the real world.
Introduction
Former US trade official Jules Katz, a senior negotiator in the round, boasted: “The WTO was created in the image of the US. The principles and rules that privilege capital became intrinsically valid and indisputable: in the ancient words of Frederic Engels: 'the legal form is consequently made into everything and the economic content into nothing' (Engels quoted in Hunt, 1993, p. 19) . ). In the words of Gayatri Spivak, “the colonizer constructs himself as he constructs the colony” (quoted by Anghie, 2005, p. 1).
Reading the GATS as ideology
GENERAL OBLIGATIONS AND DISCIPLINES Article II Most-Favoured-Nation Treatment
SPECIFIC COMMITMENTS Article XVI Market Access
INSTITUTIONAL PROVISIONS Article XXII Consultation
Influence” expressly includes government policies and regulations “relating to” the purchase, payments and use of the Service. In the banana dispute brought by the US and other members against the EU (Chapter 8), the Appellate Body of the WTO concluded that "the use of the term 'affects' reflects the intention of the drafters to extend the GATS" and is equivalent to "affecting" on" (EU-Banana, 1997b, para. 220). The Cotonou Agreement of 2000 included by 'consensus' provisions on 'new issues', particularly competition and investment, which ACP countries had successfully fought to avoid WTO entry (South Centre, 2006).
How the GATS was won (and lost?)
In the approving words of American commentator Jon Aronson: "The world ultimately acquiesced to American persistence and a skillful American campaign to change the nations' perception of the stakes involved." Part of the campaign "was to convince developing countries that the United States was willing to 'pay' for a new GATT round, but would punish other countries if there was no round". Within two short years, the art of 'trade with services' became part of the OECD's policy platform. Officials were familiar with the general concept – the Treaty of Rome of 1957 envisioned "an internal market characterized by the abolition, as between Member States, of obstacles to the free movement of goods, persons, services and capital".
An archive note described this as a 'highly political matter. at a time when some OECD countries are hesitant to discuss it even at GATT, and also when virtually all OECD members are reluctant to take it up in UNCTAD".22 Given the "rivalry between UNCTAD and GATT on this questions". there could be a "risk that informing the developing countries about our work in UNCTAD could be seen as a lack of neutrality, especially since our work is closer to what the GATT role might be than UNCTAD's".23. Their technical objection was that the mandate of the 1111 GATT only covered trade in goods; negotiations on services would require a formal change. Three competing texts were forwarded to the Uruguayan leader of the ministerial meeting in Punta del Este – the text rejecting the 'new questions', the café au lait proposal and an amendment to the latter from Argentina.33 After protracted discussions using many channels, India was successfully isolated and forced to capitulate (Winham, 1989, p. 300).
US enthusiasm waned in the run-up to the 1990 ministerial meeting in Brussels. In May 1981, Freeman told the OECD Secretary General that he was "extremely pleased" that the organization had taken up the issue. Only a privileged few sympathetic academics and commentators had access; the dissident voice of Indian journalist Chakravarthi Raghavan was a rare exception.
The opening paragraphs of the WTO protested that “the negotiations and the GATS itself have become the subject of ill-informed and hostile debate.
Trade-related development
The triumvirate of the Bretton Woods institutions and the WTO effectively trumps any international organization championing the old paradigm. Second, these summits were hosted by the United Nations - the institutional home of the old human rights and development paradigm. They would also establish protocols for cooperation and communication between staff.3 Giving effect to these commitments has not been easy (Sampson, 1998, p. 258).4 The World Bank and the IMF occupy adjacent complexes in downtown Washington.
The hostility of the major powers to UNCTAD was readily apparent in discussions of 'coherence' in the WTO Working Group on Trade, Debt and Finance. Moreover: 'The adoption of any deliberate retroactive measure in the liberalization process which reduces the extent to which any human rights are protected is a violation of human rights.'8 Although they did not oppose liberalisation, they argued for evidence-based assessments to to determine its right. form and tempo. There is one important case in which the GATS has been effective – the pernicious process of accession by some of the world's poorest states to the WTO (Adhikari and Dahal, undated; Charveriat and Kirkbride, 2003; Oxfam, 2005).
This observation highlights the lack of an institutional counterweight to the triumphal triumvirate of the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. Some developing countries reportedly raised their concerns at the special session of the Council for Trade in Services. Developing countries therefore need better research on "the elements of successful reforms" and "enhanced technical and financial assistance to improve the regulatory environment and pro-poor policies".
Instead, as Pogge notes, 'the growing reluctance to spend money on reducing world hunger is linked to the increasingly popular idea that this goal is best achieved through investment rather than aid.
The illusion of public services
Colin Leys identifies four prerequisites for the successful creation of markets in public services: 'the reconfiguration of services into commodities, the creation of a demand for the commodities, the conversion of the civil servants involved into profit-oriented workforces, and the underwriting of risk' ( Leys, 2003, p 214). The neoliberal project was saved and consolidated by more sophisticated variants – the Third Way advocated by a new wave of social democratic governments (Giddens, 2000) and the post-Washington Consensus of the international financial institutions. As Sauvé himself noted, 'the GATS can play a useful complementary role in accompanying ongoing policy changes and providing greater credibility and permanence.
However, this does not refer to 'public services' - the concept itself would be foreign to an instrument that understands the world in terms of private service markets. The Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) suggests that this term is taken from Article 45 of the EU Treaty, which states: 'The provisions of this Chapter shall not apply, so far as a particular Member State is concerned, to activities carried out in that State relating, even incidentally, to the exercise of official authority.'3 The CEO also noted that in 2001 eight cases had been filed with the European Court of Justice against attempts by Member States to invoke that article, and that each challenge was successful. (CEO, 2001). Governments have so far chosen not to clarify the scope of the GATS public service breakdown.
There is no formal definition of what constitutes "public procurement". in connection with GATS. In a communication dated 17 March 2006, the Bolivian representative to the WTO drew the attention of the Director-General. In 2007, the forum had 118 members: 35 corporate, 47 financial and 36 professional, including all the major players.32 Even the government body set up to speed up the uptake of the schemes, Partnerships UK (PUK), was a private joint venture company between 'the very companies closely involved as owners, financiers and subcontractors in such projects' and the government, which was a minority shareholder (Shaoul et al., 2007, p. 485).
Twenty years later, local commentators suggest that little has changed: “The country's fundamental problems are foreign domination, factionalism of elite politics, bad governance and feudal slavery” (Yu, 2005, p. 8).
Ruling the services infrastructure
The authors concluded that "the global economic environment associated with new technological developments has a greater tendency to unravel many economies than before". The systemic consequences of GATS for telecommunications are more visible in the concentration of corporate power. In contrast, Hardt and Negri argue that the new communication technologies that promise a new democracy and a new social equality have actually created new boundaries of inequality and exclusion, both within dominant states and especially outside them. (Hardt and Negri, 2000, p. 300).
The Mexican government had made full national treatment commitments for basic telecommunications and market access commitments for all services except non-facility-based services.7 The US complained in April 2002 that Mexico had violated its obligations under paragraphs 1.1 and 2.2 of the Reference Document to ensure cost-oriented tariffs and prevent anti-competitive practices by a major supplier. The Mexican government expressed strong concern with some of the findings, but did not appeal.8 The legislature amended the law in August 2005. They question whether the USTR has the 'detailed knowledge, expertise and incentives to negotiate trade agreements on interconnection pricing.' , and the appropriateness of trying to influence another country's domestic regulatory policy on such complex issues (Rohlfs and Sidak, 2002, p. 318).
The US describes its bans as a restriction on the character, not the amount, of the activity. First, the US had to meet one of a closed list of permitted policy targets. The British government is said to have 'sponsored' the original WTO challenge in the interests of its high-value gambling companies.37 The litigation provided a way for non-US companies to break down barriers to the US market and create a precedent as well for giant gambling in the US. companies to deregulate their domestic market so they can operate from within the US and stem the flow of gaming money abroad.
Although the EU's internal market commissioner called the US law "protectionist", the Commission did not want to directly challenge the US laws because its own member states disagreed on the issue.
