Brussels, 12/10/2015 (Agence Europe) - A report released on Monday 12 October by a group of NGOs and trade unions, led by the European Federation of Public Services Unions (EPSU) and the Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), highlights how the free-trade agreements with Canada (CETA) and the United States (TTIP) could endanger citizens' rights to basic services like water, health, and energy for the sake of corporate profits.
The report shows how the EU's CETA deal with Canada and the TTIP under negotiation with the United States could lock public utilities into irreversible commercialisation, with no account being taken of the social implications, and remove governments' ability to regulate services.
It also exposes “systemic collusion” between big business and European negotiators and shows how negotiators are doing the work of the EU's most powerful corporate lobby groups in pushing an aggressive corporate agenda of far-reaching market opening in the health, culture, postal services and water sectors that would allow them to enter and dominate the market.
It shows, too, how European negotiators “are rolling out the red carpet” for the services industry in both the CETA agreement, concluded at the end of 2014, and in TTIP talks.
The report is available at: http://goo.gl/az6irz (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)