Herald of the resistance to Belgium's approval of signing the EU-Canada free trade agreement (CETA) without certain guarantees on the protection of social, environmental, health and public services standards, and on the protection of the right of states to rule in the public interest when resolving investment disputes, the minister-president for the Region of Wallonia, Paul Magnette, presented a series of proposals on Monday 5 December for a new method of negotiating free trade agreements between the EU and third countries.
Magnette's text, the Namur Declaration, is based around three key areas – the respect of democratic procedures; the respect of socio-economic, health and environmental legislation; the guarantee of the public interest when resolving disputes. The text was signed by around 40 eminent academics, including French economists Thomas Piketty and Jean-Paul Fitoussi, Belgian Philippe Maystadt (former EIB president), Hungarian Laszlo Andor (former European commissioner), and Canadians Georges Ross and Frédéric Mérand.
In order to ensure the respect of the "legitimate demands" for transparency expressed by civil society and for democratic procedures of parliamentary control, the signatories advocate conducting contradictory and public impact analyses of the new free trade agreement before establishing a negotiating mandate, so as to ensure it will contribute to sustainable development, the reduction of poverty and inequality, and the fight against climate change. They call for the negotiating mandates to be put to prior parliamentary debate at national and European level while involving civil society. They also call for the intermediary negotiation results to be made public and especially for the provisional principle of applying mixed agreements to be abandoned in order to guarantee national parliaments their full power of control over these agreements.
In order to ensure that these new generation free trade agreements do not weaken the legislation that protects the European socio-economic, health and environmental model, the signatories call for ratification of the main human rights defence instruments and of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions on the protection of labour rights to be made obligatory for the parties. They also call for the total exclusion of public services and services of general interest from the scope of application of the agreements, as well as for the 'negative lists' method to establish the scope of the activities open to competition. Furthermore, the signatories advocate including well-calculated tax and climate requirements (such as the minimum tax rates for company profits and verifiable targets for reducing CO² emissions), 'standstill' clauses preventing the parties from lowering their standards to favour exports or to attract investment, accompanied by a sanctions mechanism and mechanisms for fair competition for the trade of information as regards the taxation of multinationals and offshore companies. They also call for the implementation of independent ex-post assessment mechanisms for the socio-economic and environmental impact of these agreements.
In addition, in order to guarantee the public interest when resolving disputes between investors and states, the signatories advocate favouring the use of competent national and European jurisdictions, and only establishing an international mechanism for dispute settlement if it provides certain advantages on the level of uniform application of the treaties, speed and competence of the judges, if it includes an appeal mechanism, and if the highest international standards for these mechanisms are respected as regards, in particular, the conditions for appointing and remunerating judges and their guarantees of independence and impartiality, during and after the exercise of their mandate. The signatories also call for the judges to be fully qualified in order to interpret and apply the trade agreements in conformity with the rules of international law, especially as regards human rights, and labour and environmental rights. "These principles should enable the European Union to demonstrate that trade does not serve private interests to the detriment of the public interest, but that it contributes to bringing people together, to the fight against climate change and to sustainable development, particularly in the most disadvantaged regions", the signatories state.
The Namur Declaration is open for citizens to join at: http://www.declarationdenamur.eu (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)