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The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and Centad jointly organised a meeting of international civil society, on November 15-16, 2005, to debate issues concerning WTO and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) negotiations. The meeting, held at Neemrana, Alwar district, Rajasthan, India, was attended by 35 non-governmental organisations from around 20 countries.
Participants came to the following conclusions about various aspects of the GATS negotiations:
Concerns regarding rules and approaches: Assessment and review, safeguard measures for emergency and public services
Current negotiations on market access should proceed only when the following conditions are met:
- A comprehensive assessment is carried out of the impact of past services liberalisation (autonomous and other) in accordance with the existing GATS agreement.
- Negotiations on rules, implementation issues and safeguard mechanisms must be completed; developing countries should be able to retain their right to exercise regulatory authority in order to achieve development goals and objectives. In the context of the GATS negotiations, this also implies that developing countries should insist on the completion of negotiations on domestic regulations before the conclusion of market access negotiations.
- A serious review of the dispute settlement rules has been undertaken -- in the absence of a clear text on these rules, developing countries should reject any case brought forward by developed countries.
More specifically, the following recommendations were made:
- International civil society rejects the introduction of new approaches in the GATS negotiations, including complementary approaches, benchmarking, qualitative and quantitative indicators, and plurilateral approaches, etc, which undermine the existing flexibility of the present positive list approach.
- Developing countries should retain the right to define sectors they deem essential to protect the public interest, such as water supply, health, education, financial services, etc.
- Developing countries should not be obliged to liberalise government procurement under the current GATS negotiations.
- Developing countries should oppose the single undertaking nature of the WTO if it results in adverse impacts from trade-offs between agreements.
- International civil society encourages the development of legally binding and effective mechanisms to increase democratic accountability of trade policies and negotiations at all levels of government in all member states.
Concerns regarding Mode 1, Mode 4 and regulatory issues
There was consensus on the following broad propositions:
- Governments should prepare nationally-accepted industrialisation and services development plans to address issues of equity, employment and poverty.
- Movement of natural persons cannot be a substitute for national development plans.
- Trade and trade effects as a result of WTO agreements should not undermine the fulfilment of labour and social rights.
- Increased commodification of labour challenges basic human values and the welfare of labour.
The following specific recommendations were made:
- Developing countries must have wider latitude than developed countries to pass regulations. When a case is filed and a developed country is the complainant, it should bear the burden of proof; if a developing country is the complainant, presumption of validity should be exercised.
- Least Developed Countries (LDCs) should be exempt from any commitments in GATS. Those that have already committed should be allowed the flexibility to reverse commitments.
- Export interest requires a permissive regulatory regime whereas there is a regulatory need to protect public interest. We need to avoid the risk of regulations being used as unfair protectionist measures especially in sophisticated developed country markets. Developing countries need more regulatory flexibility to pursue development objectives.
- The protection and movement of unskilled and semi-skilled workers is not taken into account even though there is a major excess supply capacity in developing countries.
- Mode 4: Meaningful access should be granted, and restrictions on short-term movement of people should be removed.
- Mutual recognition should facilitate the export interests of developing countries.
- Regulation of temporary and permanent movement of people should be separated.
- Governments should have the latitude to define what constitutes a public service, and public services must be exempt from the purview of GATS, particularly to ensure access and avoid exclusion to public services.
- Compensation for unfair resource transfers as a result of movement of people to rich countries should be sought, and Mode 4 arrangements are not a waiver of this claim.
- There should be no WTO regulation of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. Relevant institutions other than the WTO should be strengthened to promote these rights whether at the international or national level.
Concerns regarding Mode 3
There were specific concerns regarding Mode 3:
- GATS is a wrong model to pursue liberalisation of services through foreign direct investment (FDI).
- Absolutely no further commitments should be made by developing countries until rule-making is clarified and assessments are made by respective governments.
- Mode 3 is about investment and a means of reducing or removing regulation on investment. Before engaging in further negotiations, countries need to understand how it will impact domestic policy space to regulate these sectors.
- Unregulated investment often leads to concentration of ownership of local resources in foreign hands.
- The negotiations need to slow down since the speed of current negotiations does not allow developing countries time to understand these negotiations.
- GATS negotiations should not be used to bind autonomous liberalisation in Mode 3, done by developing countries under the requirements of adjustment programmes of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank or other mandates.
- Developed countries should refrain from using liberalisation under Mode 4, granted by developed countries as a bargaining chip to secure liberalisation under Mode 3 from developing countries.
- There are concerns about the potential impact of unregulated investment on access to and use of natural resources by women and indigenous peoples.
Click here to see list of participants
Click here to see agenda of the meeting
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