Brussels, 30/05/2016 (Agence Europe) - A report published on Monday 30 May by Public Services International (PSI), a trade union federation representing 20 million workers in the public services sector, has spoken out about the dangers of the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) for the action plan against climate change adopted at the COP 21 climate conference at the end of 2015.
The report -TiSA versus Climate Action: Trading away energy democracy - provides a detailed analysis of the recently disclosed TiSA annex on energy-related services, and highlights how the TiSA risks extending the use of fossil fuels and thus worsening climate change. PSI states that, by asking the countries participating in the TiSA to treat all energy suppliers on an equal footing, regardless of the type of energy they supply, the TiSA risks undermining efforts aimed at promoting clean technologies and the energy transition (the objective of which is to reduce the use of polluting energy sources such as coal and oil).
“TisA recycles ideas proposed by Enron and Halliburton back in 2005 - and rejected then by U.S. negotiators. The proposal that energy regulations must be technology-neutral is an attempt to insulate fossil fuel industries from changes in climate policy”, warns Robert Stumberg, an expert in international trade from the faculty of law at Georgetown University in Washington. “It contradicts existing regulatory and financial incentives for renewable energy in the United States, Canada, Europe, and elsewhere. In so doing, it would stall progress toward energy jobs of the future”, he warns.
Environmental NGO Greenpeace says that that like other trade agreements, the TiSA includes measures that tie the hands of the very decision-makers who are trying to implement the international climate agreement concluded at COP 21 at the end of 2015. Greenpeace adds that it is “unacceptable” that the TiSA and other EU-US (TTIP) and EU-Canada (CETA) trade agreements “are negotiated in the utmost secrecy, at the expense of citizens and the environment”. According to PSI general secretary Rosa Pavanelli, governments are trying to conceal these negotiations in the interest of multinationals. “The means to achieve the modest targets agreed in Paris last year are being negotiated away in the interests of the largest corporations on earth. This means that governments would have little authority to define their standards once TISA is agreed”, she says.
On the sidelines of the 18th round of technical level TiSA negotiations in Geneva this week, the EU (represented by European Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmström) will chair a ministerial meeting of TiSA stakeholder countries, on the sidelines of an OECD ministerial meeting in Paris on 1 June (see EUROPE 11559).
The PSI report can be consulted at: http://goo.gl/1IkNa5 . (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)