NGOs and Global Trade: Non-State Voices in EU Trade Policymaking by Erin Hannah

NGOs and Global Trade: Non-State Voices in EU Trade Policymaking by Erin Hannah

Author:Erin Hannah [Hannah, Erin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, General, Political Science, NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations), Treaties
ISBN: 9781134668175
Google: gSZ-CwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-01-29T11:38:58+00:00


4 Too thirsty to keep fighting?

NGOs and the EU’s quest for water services liberalization

• Locking services liberalization into the multilateral trade regime

• NGO backlash to the GATS: spotlight on water services liberalization

• Secrets, leaks, and the launch of a campaign

• Request, react, rejoice?

• Conclusion

With the conclusion of the 1994 General Agreement of Trade in Services (GATS), WTO members shifted services from traditional, national regulatory regimes to multilateral, market-based rules embodied in the international trade regime. This move would entrench services within the legal-liberal episteme, define what policy options would be conceivable in subsequent negotiations, and engender massive blowback from NGOs.

The EU’s requests for water services liberalization, particularly water for human use—the collection, purification, and distribution of natural water—in developing and least-developed countries, sparked widespread outrage and condemnation, especially among NGOs.1 At the heart of this reaction is the fundamental belief that liberalizing water services and opening up water markets to foreign competition constitute full frontal attacks on democracy and basic human rights.2 NGOs working on this issue fundamentally reject the entrenchment of services in the multilateral trade regime and consider a full-scale moratorium on GATS negotiations the only acceptable outcome of their advocacy.3 Early on it became clear to NGOs and EU policymakers alike that neither compromise nor co-optation was possible in this case. Given the intractability of the situation, and in contrast to NGOs working on the access to medicines issue, groups mobilized from outside the EU’s formal political process to pursue an aggressive, multi-pronged protest campaign against the EU’s position on water services liberalization. Even while operating on the margins of the political process, NGOs successfully improved the input legitimacy of EU trade politics by serving as educators and agenda setters, generating awareness, giving a voice to broader societal concerns at the EU, national and municipal levels. However, as in the access to medicines case and despite support from some EU member states, members of the European Parliament, and key players in the EU’s water industry, the robust legal-liberal episteme hamstrung NGO efforts to bring about substantive and normative changes in external trade policy.

The first part of this chapter provides a brief account of the entrenchment of services in the international trade regime and the resulting expansion of the legal-liberal episteme. The remainder of the chapter then traces the role of NGOs in the development of the EU’s position on water services liberalization in the context of GATS negotiations during the Doha Development Round. Due to the highly technical nature of trade in services negotiations, together with their complex bilateral, request-offer format, EU experts and technocrats working in DG Trade were empowered in the external trade policymaking process relative to other actors. They were able to insulate important decisions from public scrutiny and to effectively marginalize and de-legitimize NGOs by emphasizing flaws, hyperbole, or misunderstandings in their advocacy. In so doing, EU experts and technocrats successfully deflected criticism and exercised their distinct, functional authority to develop external trade policy on water services that “fit” within the legal-liberal episteme.

For



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