LAHORE: EU-India Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which is expected to be signed in early 2011, will fuel poverty, inequality and environmental destruction. European and Indian advocacy groups term it “nontransparent” in their recently conducted study titled “Trade Invaders: How big business is driving the EU-India free trade negotiations”.
The European Union and India initiated negotiations on multifaceted FTA in 2007, including trade in goods, deregulation of services, investment, government procurement and the strict enforcement of intellectual property rights.
The study conducted by the Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) and India FDI Watch indicates that powerful corporate sectors, including banking, retail and manufacturing, are demanding access to the Indian market – exposing rural farmers, small traders and businesses to crushing competition.
The report examines industry’s demands and corporate lobbying strategies on both sides of the negotiations.
It point outs that big pharma’s proposals to strengthen intellectual property rights could endanger the availability of affordable generic medicines for the treatment of AIDS, cancer and malaria, not just in India but across the developing world.
It indicates that in Europe, corporate India’s market access agenda is likely to lead to job losses in the automobile and textiles sector, increased pressure on health, quality and labour standards.
The 44-page report highlights that the issues raised by public interest groups have been largely ignored, in contrast, business interests have been granted privileged access to policy makers on both sides, allowing them to effectively set the FTA agenda.
It states that with saturated markets and stagnant growth rates at home, EU businesses and politicians are keen to get unhampered access to the vast Indian market.
They have identified the FTA with India as one of the priorities for the EU’s aggressive Global Europe trade strategy, which includes a range of demands, including the full liberalisation of trade in industrial goods, elimination of almost all agricultural import tariffs, dismantling of investment regulations in sectors such as banking, insurance, telecom, retail and postal services, liberalisation of trade in services, a ban on export restrictions to secure access to raw materials, liberalisation of public procurement markets, the ease of migration of key personnel and the protection of intellectual property rights beyond the requirements stipulated by the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The FTA, however, business says, should not be linked with social or environmental standards, the report underlines.
The report says that India, on the other side, has increasingly turned to export-driven growth, particularly in services, which it wants to sustain even though hundreds of millions of Indians have not benefited from that model. It reveals that Indian industry are pushing for more access to the European services market, an EU-wide work permit and relaxed visa restrictions to make it easier for their employees to move around Europe, elimination of 95 percent of the EU’s tariffs, relaxed quality and health standards and the ability to challenge any future regulations that might hamper Indian exports to the EU.
It states that internally, big business has been campaigning to open up the Indian retail sector and parts of the corporate sector want to strengthen intellectual property rights in India. But Indian business is opposed to radical tariff-cuts on its side and an FTA with labour and environmental standards attached to it.
The advocacy groups voice concern that intense lobbying is conducted in New Delhi and at the EU member state level and but behind closed doors. No negotiating text or position is made available to the public. It terms proceedings nontransparent with even requests for access to meaningful information by parliamentarians, state governments and civil society in India and Europe being repeatedly rebuffed.
It states that in the absence of transparency, labour unions, informal workers associations, anti-poverty, environmental, women, farmer and public health groups in India and the EU have called for an immediate halt to the negotiations until all information is released.
The report concludes that both the Indian government and the EU institutions have a political responsibility to end their relationship with vested interest groups and develop a trade policy, in which social and ecological justice trump corporate interests. It is a grave violation of the most basic democratic principles in the two self-proclaimed largest democracies of the world, the report points out.
It stresses that both sides should halt the EU-India FTA negotiations until all existing negotiating positions, draft proposals, stakeholder contributions and government commissioned studies are made public. It also demands that comprehensive impact assessments and meaningful, broad consultations with the most affected groups in Europe and India be implemented.
EU-India FTA imperils the poor and environment: report
