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Sent: Saturday, December 15, 2001 2:53 PM
Subject:] Znet: Sean Healy -MAI Rises from the Dead from: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
================================== ZNet Commentary Mai Rises From The Dead December 15, 2001 By Sean Healy In B-grade splatter films, even after the evil villain has been sliced,diced and dunked in lava, you just
know
he'll be back for the sequel.
Apparently it's the same with corporate plots to take over the world --because the Multilateral Agreement on
Investment, which many had thought dead and buried, has
now risen from the grave.
Dubbed the ``corporations' bill of rights'', the MAI was a plan hatched in secret and kept under wraps even
from the parliaments of the rich nations which were
negotiating it.
When its draft text was leaked to a non-government organisation in early 1997, it became the subject of
a worldwide, and very angry, campaign. Given its
backroom origins, it was afraid of the sunlight --and
the campaign was eventually enough to force those
behind
it, in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development, to announce in late 1998 that it was being
put down.
From the moment it was laid to rest, however, its architects in the corporate boardrooms and cabinets
of the US and Europe were planning its resurrection
and, sure enough, some of its body parts have since
made their way into International Monetary Fund
policy
and the terms of the Free Trade Area of the Americas
and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation trade
agreements.
But its biggest step back into the land of the living came on November 14, when after days of tense
negotiations in the World Trade Organisation's Qatar
ministerial meeting, the WTO announced that it would
launch talks on the terms of an eventual international
agreement on investment.
With negotiations due to start in the new year, the MAI is well and truly back.
The original MAI was truly a horror story. Described by a former director-general of the World Trade
Organisation, Renato Ruggerio, as ``the constitution
for a single global economy'', the MAI would have
given multinational corporations' virtual free rein to invest their capital where, how, when and under
whatever terms they liked.
Among the ``rights'' conferred on corporations by the MAI were:
* the right to compete against domestic companies in all economic sectors without restriction (called
"national treatment" in trade lingo);
* the right to acquire any business or property in any economic sector,including natural resources and
strategic industries such as communications and
defence;
* the right to convert currency and move money across borders without constraints;
* the right to move production facilities without limit
or penalty, regardless of the impacts on workers
or host communities;
* the freedom from conditions placed on investment (called erformance requirements''), such as
anti-speculation measures and rules of conduct; and
* the right to sue governments for cash damages if an investor claims ts rights have been violated under the
agreement (called ``protection rom expropriation'').
The MAI would have severely restricted the ability of governments to et the framework and parameters for
investment, whether long-term oreign direct investment
such as the establishment of factories or tores) or
short-term speculation (such as the purchase of stocks
or bonds).
In particular, many of the mechanisms by which Third World governments seek to make foreign investment meet
domestic development goals would have been ruled out.
Laws which specify a certain amount of local content in manufactured goods or a certain number of managerial
and technical employees in a company, for example, would
have been outlawed, as would "speed bump" finance laws,
which discourage speculation by requiring investors to
hold onto financial assets for a minimum period of time. In its ministerial declaration, the World Trade Organisation was careful not to give too much,
specifying only that a future framework agreement on
investment should seek to ``secure transparent, secure
and predictable conditions'' for investment.
But one of the main backers of the MAI, the Trans-Atlantic Business Dialogue, a little-known but
highly influential grouping of corporate chieftains
from Europe and the US, revealed its negotiating position
in a report published on October 29, just before the WTO
ministerial.
"As a point of departure'', the report stated, "governments shouldlaunch negotiations in the new
round to provide for: transparency, predictability,
and stability of rules governing international
investment; national treatment; and seek early
agreement to promote enforcement of existing TRIMS
(Agreement on Trade Related Investment Measures).
The TRIMS agreement, in force since the WTO's foundation in 1995,already provides some MAI-like restrictions on
what "performance requirements" governments can
enforce.
"Subsequently", the report continues, "WTO rules should be a basis for enhanced market access, protection from
expropriation, and redress for the settlement of
disputes".
Further, a close analysis of European Union documents proposing new WTO agreements on investment and
competition policy, conducted by Ville-Veikko Hirvel
of Friends of the Earth Finland, has revealed how
MAI-style provisions hide behind benign-sounding phrases.
Hirvela traces the linguistic contortions by which "transparency" becomes the right of corporations to
sue governments for any policy which negatively
affects their revenues.
"Transparency provisions", one EU document reveals, must include``procedures through which private
parties can have ... guarantees of due process",
the "availability of effective..remedies", and
the establishment of "authority...with sufficient
enforcement powers...to provide that sanctions
should be established at a sufficient level to
constitute effective deterrence".
Similar rights to sue in the North American Free Trade Agreement have allowed companies to win damages from
governments which close their toxic waste dumps, for
example, or ban the sale of dangerous chemicals.
The good news is that multinational corporations and rich-country governments are still a long way from
being able to sick their resurrected monster onto an
unsuspecting world.
The commencement of WTO negotiations on investment and other new issues including competition policy, government
procurement and "trade facilitation" measures -- was
amongst the most hotly contested issue in Qatar.
Many Third World countries, led by India, were opposed outright to suchnegotiations, fearing that they would
result in a crippling of their ability to set their
own terms for investment.
But through a combination of bribes and blackmail, European and US negotiators were eventually able to
overcome opposition. India was the last to buckle,
18 hours after the scheduled finish of the Qatar
summit, agreeing to only abstain on the new issues, rather than oppose them.
The price rich countries had to pay for getting agreement on negotiations, however, was a much
dragged out and delayed process.
Substantive negotiations on investment will not begin straight away. Rather, the first round of negotiations
will only consider the "scope and definition" and the ``modalities''
(procedures) for a future agreement on
investment.
The outcome of these preliminary negotiations will then be presented to the next WTO ministerial in 2003. Only
if there is an ``explicit consensus'' at that meeting
will substantive negotiations on an agreement proceed.
The capacity of business and rich-country governments to strong-arm such an ``explicit consensus'' out of
WTO members should not be underestimated.
But this breathing space means that the international social movements which opposed, and killed, the MAI
when it first appeared now have two years to ready
themselves to kill it again.
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