If multinational companies have the power
to restrict the ability of governments to legislate, what will be the
implications for the development of healthy public policy? This is the fear
raised by the inclusion of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) in the
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). There are already some smaller trade treaties
that have ISDS inserted into their conditions, and it is these that are
enabling for example, Phillip Morris, the tobacco company, to sue the Australian
and Uruguayan governments for affecting their profits by encouraging people to
stop smoking. There are many other examples – the government in El Salvador is
being sued by an Australian company as the government has refused permission
for a goldmine as it fears it will pollute drinking water. Friends of the Earth
have argued that lower standards of environmental protection will occur if
further ISDS clauses are written in to these treaties. The new TTIP (between
the USA and Europe) seemed relatively benign until people started to realize
the effect of the ISDS within it. Public concern grew to an extent that the
European Commission started a public consultation on the issue in March 2014,
which closed in July 2014. Its report is due this month. Over 149,399
individuals and organizations participated in the consultation.
In short, not only would the development of healthy public
policy – already a battle – be severely affected, but also the ISDS would
result in massive bias towards the interests of the business sector. Even The Economist, a magazine that is hardly
left wing, and which reports on business matters, has recently come out against
the TTIP. It has said that ISDS is “a way to let multinational companies get rich
at the expense of ordinary people”. Others, both critics and those corporate
lawyers who are involved in the process and stand to gain from ISDS, have
expressed amazement that governments have agreed to these investor-state
dispute settlements. One submission to the EC consultation was a group of
professors from a range of European universities, who stated:
“The system involves a shift in sovereign priorities toward
the interests of foreign owners of major assets and away from those of other
actors whose direct representation and participation is limited to democratic
processes and judicial institutions.”
This quote is from this blog, which provides an overview of the
consultation:
For the full response from the Professors’ group, see also: http://conflictoflaws.net/News/2014/10/20140711_MuirWatt.pdf
There’s also some useful comments at: http://conflictoflaws.net/2014/isds-in-the-ttip/
The French government has already said that it will not sign the
TTIP if the ISDS is included: http://www.euractiv.com/sections/trade-society/french-government-will-not-sign-ttip-agreement-2015-310037
Now, I’m not an expert on this at all, but it seems that the EC
hasn’t yet published its report on the consultation. There was, earlier in
November, a discussion with the most senior EC leaders about the inclusion of
ISDS in the TTIP, which seemed to indicate that the tide is turning against
ISDS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfBXhtdBnSg
I guess what this shows is that the corporate sector has huge ability
to shift the balance of power in its favour, pushing ahead terms of trade that
contain all sorts of hidden aspects that float past a public that has limited
understanding of what they will mean in practice. The fact that there has at
least been a pause, and possibly even a reversal of the TTIP shows that public
resistance does work. The 38 degrees campaigning group has amassed 910,000
signatures against the TTIP http://www.38degrees.org.uk/
and http://ttipaction.38degrees.org.uk/
In October there were protests across 24 of the EU member states
and the Stop TTIP petition has now been signed by 750,000 people. The Stop TTIP
campaign calls itself a self organized European Citizens’ Initiative:
The site documents other attempts to overrule democracy and to
allow corporate interests to trump national sovereignty.
Developing healthy public policy, to me, is the cornerstone of
the Ottawa Charter, which in turn is the foundation of modern health promotion.
Certainly the other four ‘planks’ are essential, but healthy public policy
facilitates and enables the others. It firmly makes the move from victim
blaming and from a reliance on health education alone. Ever since the Ottawa
Conference in 1986, governments have squirmed and wriggled out of their
obligations to use policy to promote and protect people’s health and tackle
health inequalities. Michael Sparks spoke of the battle to keep building
healthy public policy on the right track:
Sparks, M. (2011) Building Healthy Public Policy: don’t believe the
misdirection, Health Promotion
International, 26(3), 259-262
The initiative ‘Health in All Policies’, started in 2006 under
the Finnish Presidency of the EU, was given impetus by the Adelaide conference
on the same theme in 2010:
And also by the 8th International Health Promotion
conference in Helsinki in 2013:
The values and principles of Health in all Policies are
diametrically opposed to the direction of travel represented by ISDS in the
TTIP. Health impact assessment – where the impacts on health of any action or
policy are properly assessed – has obviously not been considered in relation to
the TTIP. If the TTIP, with its current ISDS, is agreed to by the governments
involved, there will be an utter undermining of those policy efforts to improve
health. The power of the food industry, tobacco and alcohol industries will be
further enhanced – the very industries that have to date, resisted attempts to move
their activities in any meaningful way to increase health. There will be consequences
for health and the environment from other parts of the corporate world that
will use the ISDS to challenge any policies that they regard as eroding their
profits. If you do nothing else, at least read the information about the ISDS
and the TTIP and decide to join in the debate.
