FTA Critic Told To "Get A Visa" To Go To Australia

Tuesday, 16 November 2010, 4:13 pm
Press Release: Professor Jane Kelsey

FTA Critic Told To "Get A Visa" To Go To Australia

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
16 November 2010


On Sunday evening (14 November), Professor Jane Kelsey was detained at immigration at Sydney airport for about an hour at the beginning of a tour to launch a new book on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. She was informed by a senior immigration official that she was not eligible for visa free entry to Australia on the grounds that she was not an ‘appropriate person’ under Australia’s 1994 immigration laws.

While eventually allowed to enter Australia on this occasion, Professor Kelsey was told she would need to apply formally for a visa for any future visits, and was advised to seek a waiver from the Australian High Commissioner.

The official relied on a Springbok tour conviction from the early 1980s, which he claimed had attracted a suspended prison sentence of one year and nine months. Despite claims by the official that ‘appropriate checks have been made’, no such sentence was ever imposed on Professor Kelsey or the others involved in the case. Indeed, the Court of Appeal overturned a binding-over order that would have prevented those involves from engaging in further political protest. Former Green MP Sue Bradford, who was also involved in the case, has confirmed that she has never had similar problems entering Australia.

Professor Kelsey describes this development as ‘totally bizarre’.

‘I am a constant visitor to Australia for professional and personal reasons – at least eight times in the past two years, including just one month ago for an academic conference on trade.’

‘I always tick the box about criminal convictions, which relate to the Springbok tour and Bastion Point in the early 1980s. They have the list on record at Australian immigration. Usually I wait 10 or at most 15 minutes and they wave me on. This twist came completely out of the blue.’

Professor Kelsey has expressed her concern to the Australian High Commissioner and sought clarification of her immigration status under Australian law, including whether she will be required to seek visa for future entry to Australia.

‘It is possible it is an ill-judged over-reach by super-officious immigration officials at Sydney.‘

‘However it is equally likely that my name has recently been flagged, presumably linked to my role in promoting critical debate on the TransPacific Partnership negotiations. Requiring me to apply for a visa each time I go to Australia would make it easier to monitor and restrict my movements. At the very least sends an intimidating message to me and to others.’

Last year Professor Kelsey raised concerns over the apparent surveillance by the SIS of her activities as a critic of neoliberalism and free trade agreements, which she argues are actually investor-rights agreements that impose severe constraints on New Zealand’s future policy choices and sovereignty.

‘This latest development seems to confirm that promoting informed and democratic debate on these secretly negotiated agreements is deemed a threat to national security. Everyone should be worried about the implications for academic freedom and informed debate in a democracy.’

- Press release from Professor Jane Kelsey.

ENDS

G8 G20 CRASH THE MEETING TORONTO 2010

EZLN - Our Word is our Weapon

Montage of pictures from the Zapatista struggle in Chiapas, Mexico, with remarks read by Subcomandante Marcos in English

Monkey-Wrenching the Globalisation Gang

APRN Trade Conference – Hong Kong, July 11-13, 2005

BWIs , IFIs , FTAs and MDGs : WMDs for the TNCs : Monkey-Wrenching the Globalization Gang

Aziz Choudry, GATT Watchdog

Click here for Aziz Choudry's full report: Neoliberal Globalization: Canc繳n and Beyond

I went to Bretton Woods, but all I got was this lousy t-shirt. Amazingly, it’s not a ‘one size fits all’ and it’s not full of holes.

Walking through the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods two years ago, in the New Hampshire mountain resort and official birthplace, in July 1944, of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and of plans for an international trade organization – eventually embodied by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)/World Trade Organization (WTO), I thought about the genocide of Indigenous Peoples in that part of the USA, now called “New England”, perpetrated by Puritans and other settlers who viewed them, as historian Douglas Leach put it, as a “graceless and savage people, dirty and slothful in their personal habits, treacherous in their relations with the superior race…fit only to be pushed aside and subordinated” .

Neoliberalism and Colonialism Fast forward a few centuries, and this colonizing mindset and racist contempt still underpins contemporary forms of subjugation, exploitation and dispossession against peoples of the Third World as well as Indigenous Peoples and racialized communities in the global North. It lives on at the G8, in the neoliberal policies of the Bretton Woods institutions, and powerful Northern governments like the US and the European Union, in aid arrangements and debt, in free trade and investment agreements, multilateral, regional and bilateral, and the activities of transnational corporations. 21st century imperialism is frequently masked in the language of development, ‘good governance’, ‘working for a world free of poverty’ , ‘fighting poverty in Asia and the Pacific’ ‘countering terror with trade’ and ‘building freedom through trade’ .

They might call it market capitalism, economic reforms and free trade instead of Manifest Destiny (though this may be news to the Bush Administration as it wages its wars and occupations), but the song remains the same.

''Colonialism is a big event that economists have not talked about, " MIT professor of economics and current winner of the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded by the American Economic Association to the US's top economist under 40, Daron Acemoglu told the Boston Globe last month. ''Historians talk about it. Political scientists talk about it. But economists just focus on the last 50 years."

When we discuss ‘policy coherence’ in the era of global neoliberal economics we should acknowledge the colonial roots of neoliberalism. In this supposedly ‘post-colonial’ world, colonial relations and geohistorical location continue to shape the reality of who eats, and who doesn’t, who has freedom, and who doesn’t, who has access to land and water, and who doesn’t, who can work in dignity and justice, and who doesn’t, who carries the burden of crippling debt, and who doesn’t, who has the right to determine their own futures, and who doesn’t.

When we hear ‘policy coherence’ talk, we should ask: coherent for whom and with what? The programmes of the IMF, World Bank and WTO fundamentally fail to cohere with development options which carve a different path than market capitalism. Indeed, they work to crush them, to shrink policy space and to prevent future governments from even thinking about alternatives. They are incoherent with peoples’ struggles for justice, dignity and self-determination. Behind sustainable development and pro-poor rhetoric, these institutions’ policies are utterly incoherent with socially and ecologically just development. ‘Policy coherence’ is a euphemism for imperialist globalization and expanded opportunities for domination by Northern governments and corporations.

There is definitely ‘policy coherence’ between colonization and neoliberalism. As activists, social movements and NGOs, we must name and confront the systems of capitalism and colonialism in our analyses and actions, if we are to put forward coherent agendas of resistance, and effectively struggle for justice, locally and globally.

Policy coherence: Singing from the same neoliberal songbook Almost every few weeks, another high-level statement calls for greater coherence between the Bretton Woods institutions, the WTO, the UN, the baby banks, bilateral donors and so on. This coherence agenda means support for the Doha work programme of the WTO – liberalization in goods, services, investment, trade-related capacity-building, improving global financial stability through capital account liberalization (didn’t that work well in Thailand and Korea in the 1990s! ) and channelling increased investment to developing countries and assisting borrower countries to improve coherence in their national policies.

In 2001, L. Alan Winters, (Director of the World Bank’s Development Research Group, Economic Professor at University of Sussex, and advisor to numerous international organizations on trade and development including the WTO, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the InterAmerican Development Bank (IADB), the European Commission and UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) wrote : “The WTO and the BWOs are already rather highly coherent. All subscribe to basically the same model of society and the economy, favouring markets over direction, advocating transparency and predictability, seeing international trade and investment as routes to prosperity and peace, accepting the importance of development and poverty alleviation, and recognizing the possibility that adjustment is painful. Hence much of what the three bodies do is mutually supportive, and incoherence is mostly just a matter of detail. This is not the impression one would get from some of the rhetoric behind calls for coherence.” This does not mean that there are not differences among these organizations in areas where they have jurisdictional overlap, especially in relation to financial liberalization.

Besides shared commitment to neoliberalism, the WTO, IMF and World Bank have formal relationships to achieve ‘policy coherence’. The Ministerial Declaration on the Contribution of the [World] Trade Organization to Achieving Greater Coherence in Global Economic Policymaking, in the Uruguay Round Act 1994, Part III.2 urged the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO to follow “consistent and mutually supportive policies…with a view to achieving greater coherence in global economic policymaking.” This is expressed in various agreements, ministerial declarations and decisions between the institutions. In May 2003, senior officials of the three institutions, including IMF Managing Director Horst Koehler, WTO Director General Supachai Panitchpakdi and World Bank President James Wolfensohn met in Geneva under the umbrella of the WTO General Council to develop a common approach to global economic policies – the “coherence agenda.”


The IMF and World Bank offer “technical assistance” and loans for adjusting debtor countries’ economies to full trade and investment liberalization. “Technical assistance” sounds benign enough. In reality it means coercing countries of the South to swallow more neoliberal medicine, sometimes in sectors over which they have been disputing further liberalization at the WTO. World Bank and IMF loan conditionalities generally insist that governments lower or eliminate tariffs, remove restrictions on foreign investment, modify customs procedures, fiscal and labour regulations and procurement policies, and promote private sector ownership. Privatization, deregulation and trade and investment liberalization have been core to Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) and the so-called Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) which the World Bank and IMF now insist countries adopt in order to receive continued loans. Former World Bank chief economist and US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers claimed in 1998: “IMF and…World Bank programs not just in East Asia but in India, Latin America, Central Europe and Africa, have led to more systematic trade liberalization than…bilateral or multilateral negotiations have ever achieved.”

Amid much official rhetoric about trade replacing aid to move people out of poverty comes more explicit aid-for-trade liberalization, (and, as we have seen with the recent G8 finance ministers’ debt reduction package, ‘debt relief’ for enforced liberalization and privatization) deals. The World Bank is increasingly concentrating its resources on trade-related operations, particularly towards least-developed countries (LDCs), transition economies and those in the process of WTO accession. The Bank is allocating more funds to trade-related activities in 2004-2006 than it did during the eight years from 1996-2003. Total trade lending over the next three years is nearly US $4 billion compared with just over $2 billion in the past 8 years . Lending for trade facilitation is increasing from $300 million over the past 8 years to a projected $1 billion over the next 3 years . Meanwhile the Bank leads the joint agency Integrated Framework for Trade-related Technical Assistance for Least Developed Countries (IF). The other agencies involved are the IMF, WTO, the UN Development Programme (UNDP), UNCTAD, and the ITC (International Trade Centre - the technical cooperation agency of UNCTAD and the WTO for operational, enterprise-oriented aspects of trade development). According to its website , the IF’s objectives are to ”"mainstream" (integrated) trade into the national development plans such as the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) of least-developed countries; and to assist in the co-ordinated delivery of trade-related technical assistance in response to needs identified by the LDC”.

The spread of World Bank-led diagnostic trade studies is forcing rapid unilateral trade liberalisation into national development plans through the back door.

The IMF, meanwhile, remains the global gatekeeper for aid, the most important single agency in signalling the quality of a country’s macro-economic environment and creditworthiness to other donors. The IMF’s Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) complements and interlocks with the World Bank’s PRSP and the work of the WTO. Its platform is trade liberalisation, privatisation and a reduced role for the state. In April 2004, the IMF launched its Trade Integrated Mechanism (TIM) to assist member countries meet balance of payment shortfalls resulting from multilateral trade liberalization (like reduction in export revenues, and increased import bills). Its first recipients were Bangladesh and the Dominican Republic. The IMF has also boosted technical assistance and research on trade.

A 10 December 1999 World Bank-IMF operational document on PRGF-PRSP argues: "The impediments to faster sustainable growth should be identified and policies agreed to promote more rapid growth: such as structural reforms to create free and more open markets, including trade liberalisation, privatisation and tax reform and policies that create a stable and predictable environment for private sector activity."

IFIs, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, comprised of the world’s thirteen most powerful Central Bankers , the WTO and the baby banks essentially form much of the framework for global economic policymaking. The IFIs set parameters for all donors of the accepted creed of policy discourse with developing countries and ‘effective’ aid delivery strategies. Calls for greater coherence of donor countries to harmonize their aid, investment, export credit insurance and trade policies are cold comfort when coherence means conformity to a neoliberal model of development. Trade-related conditionalities of the IMF-WB (and regional banks like the ADB) weaken negotiating positions and possibilities for formation of alliances of countries to stand against US-EU bullying in multilateral or regional trade negotiations or aggressive bilateral deal-making.

The ‘Baby Banks’ Trade–related technical assistance has also become an increased focus of ADB and IADB lending policy. The IADB has a close formal relationship with the WTO. In February 2002 it signed a memorandum of understanding to deepen cooperation on providing technical assistance like training courses and workshops on trade negotiations and capacity-building to Latin American and Caribbean countries “to participate fully in the multilateral trading system.” The IDB’s central policy goal is economic integration of Latin American countries with the global market. Since 1994 the IADB has contributed over US $10 million to support the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) process . In May 2002 WTO and ADB officials signed a memorandum of understanding under which their institutions agreed to cooperate on joint technical assistance programmes for participants from the ADB's developing member governments in Asia and the Pacific .

WTO As the WTO broadens its scope it opens up a greater interface with the IMF and World Bank, which have also broadened their roles beyond their original core activities in recent years. A key area for jurisdictional overlap between the institutions concerns capital liberalization, especially in relation to the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), Trade-Related Investment Measures (TRIMs), and the plurilateral Financial Services Agreement. Continuing pressure from Northern governments and corporations in the GATS negotiations aims to achieve, by the backdoor, the liberalization and convertibility of capital accounts of developing countries. Meanwhile any future Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI)-style deal on investments at the WTO would inevitably create other areas of overlap with the IMF-World Bank.

Potential for inter-institutional tensions certainly exists, and there already are examples. As Korean academic Dukgeun Ahn has noted , measures adopted under South Korea’s December 1997 agreement with the IMF during the financial crisis became the focal point for WTO trade disputes with the USA and the EU. Here, IMF-prescribed and temporary increased roles of the government in the financial restructuring of the Korean corporate sector were challenged under the WTO Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures. Ahn observes: “There is no exception to WTO obligations for policy measures regardless of whether they are employed as parts of adjustment measures or IMF conditionality.” Perhaps the moral of this story is that when there is apparently full coherence and congruence between IMF, World Bank and WTO measures, you stand to get screwed for not being neoliberal enough, and if there is inconsistency, you also get screwed for not being neoliberal enough!
The UN, Neoliberal Globalization and the Millennium Development Goals The Monterrey Consensus declaration from the UN Conference on Financing for Development (FfD), attended by representatives of the IMF, World Bank, WTO and many corporations was aptly dubbed the “Washington Consensus wearing a sombrero” by John Foster of the Ottawa-based North-South Institute. With its advocacy of trade and investment liberalization, privatization and the marketization of land and resources, it highlights again the neoliberal capture of the United Nations. It comes on top of increasingly entrenched corporate involvement at UN agencies, its 1993 dissolution of the UN Centre on Transnational Corporations, and the UN Global Compact with 50 of the world’s largest corporations, an initiative which Kofi Annan promised would “safeguard open markets while at the same time creating a human face for the global economy" among other things . Arguments for more policy space must be seen in the context of an overall push to get UN members to ultimately move towards the same goal – free market economies.

On April 15 2005, a special high-level meeting of the UN ECOSOC with the Bretton Woods institutions, the WTO and UNCTAD (WTO Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi’s new employer) discussed ‘Coherence, coordination and cooperation in the context of the implementation of the Monterrey Consensus: achieving the internationally agreed development goals, including those contained in the Millennium Declaration.” The President of ECOSOC’s summary noted that “the increasing interdependence of national economies in a globalizing world and the emergence of rule-based regimes for international economic relations meant that the space for national economic policy was now framed by international discipline, commitments and global market considerations”. Most sought “decisive progress” in the Hong Kong WTO Ministerial Conference towards “a successful conclusion of WTO negotiations in 2006 on the basis of a truly development-oriented Doha agenda”. Indeed, this is the UN Secretary-General’s request. A June 1 2005 Secretary-General’s report to the UN General Assembly reiterated support for “addressing systemic issues: enhancing the coherence and consistency of the international monetary, financial and trading systems in support of development.”

The MDGs ignore structural issues at the root of poverty such as debt, unfair trade and economic policies. Perhaps that is unsurprising. They were essentially drawn up by ministers from OECD countries, with no participation by governments from the South let alone those most directly affected. How exactly will governments finance primary health care and education while they are being forced to cut public expenditure and privatize services under neoliberal conditionalities of IFIs? How can the poor afford commercialized healthcare, water, education? How can even the rather modest goals of the MDGs be achieved by any country in the grip of neoliberalism, privatisation, and debt slavery? The social development goals are little more than a whitewash of the continuing policies of structural adjustment and liberalization – policies which worsen poverty and stunt genuine development.

In his “In Larger Freedom” report, Kofi Annan says that “development, security and human rights go hand in hand”. But what little the MDGs appear to give with one hand is taken away with the other. Goal 8 of the MDGs is: ‘Develop a global partnership for development …. Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, non-discriminatory trading and financial system (includes a commitment to good governance, development and poverty reduction – both nationally and internationally)”
IBON’s Joseph Yu points out: “The pessimism towards meeting the MDGs is not meant to spur rich donor countries to increase development assistance to underdeveloped countries, but to set the stage for the prescription of further neoliberal reforms as the means to achieve rapid economic growth and consequently, poverty reduction…Promoting an “open, rule-based trading and financial system”, cooperation with the private sector and competition in the global economy risks poverty alleviation goals being overwhelmed by corporate and donor interests.”

Finance Liberalization and FTAs The 1998 UNCTAD Trade and Development Report noted: “the ascendancy of finance over industry together with the globalization of finance have become underlying sources of instability and unpredictability in the world economy. (…) In particular, financial deregulation and capital account liberalization appear to be the best predictor of crises in developing countries.” Capital account liberalization, the removal of controls, taxes, subsidies and quantitative restrictions that affect capital account transactions - whether promoted through IMF loan conditionalities, the WTO Agreement on Financial Services, or now, in bilateral free trade and investment agreements – has already devastated domestic economies, particularly in South East Asia and Mexico in the 1990s.

The Chile and Singapore FTAs with the USA have “NAFTA -plus” broad definitions of investment, which throw the door wide open for disgruntled investors to take a case to a dispute tribunal. Both agreements impose alarming new limits on the use of capital controls. Indian policy analyst and researcher Kavaljit Singh argues that Chile’s controls on capital inflows have helped insulate it against financial crises. He writes that it “stands to reason that the probability of occurrence of a financial crisis in Chile and Singapore would increase manifold with the removal of capital controls as envisaged in the bilateral trade agreements with the U.S.”

Even free traders have slammed this aspect of these FTAs. In a March 2003 Financial Times article, Jagdish Bhagwati and Daniel Tarullo wrote, “The intention of the Bush administration to use these two agreements as ‘templates‘ for other trade agreements, possibly including the Doha round, means that acceptance of the capital control provisions could engender a trade policy that causes far-reaching damage. The prohibition on capital controls has the makings of a U.S. foreign policy debacle. Imagine that a government imposes short-term capital controls in order to manage financial problems.

Compensation will ensue, but only for American investors. The citizens of the developing country will then see a rich U.S. corporation or individual being indemnified while everyone else in the country suffers from the crisis. One would be hard-pressed to think of a better prescription for anti-American outrage.”

Fighting Back While some people say “make poverty history”, some of us say “make capitalism history”. Capitalism and colonialism are all too often the elephants in the room in NGO activities on debt, trade economic, social and political justice – and war.

If our analysis of neoliberalism takes an explicitly anti-colonial and anti-capitalist standpoint, we may question strategies which aim to move these predatory, carnivorous institutions and companies towards a vegetarian diet by polite petitioning and ‘civil society dialogue’, and instead work together to delegitimize them. We must go beyond a compartmentalized campaign approach to individual institutions and their policies and name and confront the values and ideology that lie behind and link them.

Both critics and supporters of policy coherence argue that coherence at an international level between institutions has to be based on coherence within national governments and their different ministries, agencies and departments. Strategically and practically, I think that it is primarily the domestic pressure points of intervention - conflicts, contradictions, tensions between officials, government ministries and departments - which are important to identify and campaign around, rather than the potential or apparent tensions between the IFIs and the WTO.

As labour researcher Gerard Greenfield warns, calls for transparency, openness and more democracy within institutions like the WTO ignore “the fact that we need to have the ability to do something about what we see, otherwise we’ll just be spectators in a transparent process… Aggressively cutting back our ability to impose democratic priorities on capital is not an afterthought - it lies at the very heart of the globalization project.

For those in power, an opposition that prioritizes dialogue and a contest of ideas with elites is far less dangerous and more controllable than one that understands power and builds counter-power through community organizing and movement-building.

“Many of the biggest and strongest civil society organizations orient upwards, justifying and elaborating the actions and ideologies of the dominant power. Others orient to the grassroots, and within this there are two different types: those that organize and mobilize to fit into programmes constructed by dominant power, and those that organize and mobilize to confront the dominant power” write South African activists and researchers Stephen Greenberg and Nhlanhla Ndlovu.

Perhaps we need to reclaim the roots of the word monkey-wrenching – it is a term from Ed Abbey’s book about a fictional band of militant environmental activists, The Monkey Wrench Gang referring to direct action against the powerful. The biggest and strongest kinds of monkey-wrench are strong and sustained communities of resistance and social movements. For those of us that do research and policy analysis, our challenge is to redouble our efforts to orient our work in ways that strengthen and support those popular struggles against neoliberalism, in our communities, and internationally.

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Douglas Edward Leach. 1958. Flintlock and Tomahawk: New England in King Philip’s War. New York: Macmillan, p.22 World Bank website: http://www.worldbank.org
Asian Development Bank website: http://www.adb.org
Robert B. Zoellick, US Trade Representative. Countering Terror With Trade. Washington Post editorial, 20 September 2001. http://www.ustr.gov/Document_Library/Op-eds/2001/Countering_Terror_with_Trade.html
US Trade Representative website: http://www.ustr.gov
Robert Gavin. MIT professor named top economist under 40: Key study minimizes geography in formation of rich vs. poor nations. Boston Globe. 15 June 2005.
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2005/06/15/mit_professor_named_top_economist_under_40
L. Alan Winters. Coherence with no “here”: WTO co-operation with the World Bank and the IMF. Paper presented at CEPR/ECARES/World Bank Conference on ‘The World Trading System Post Seattle: Institutional Design, Governance and Ownership’, 14/15 July 2000, Universit矇 Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels.
WTO website, http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/32-dchor_e.htm
Emad Mekay, IMF, World Bank Join Forces With WTO, Inter Press Service. 13 May 2003
Lawrence Summers, Why America Needs the IMF, Wall Street Journal, 27 March 1998, p. A.22
Bank Information Center USA website. The World Bank and Trade Liberalization. http://www.bicusa.org/bicusa/issues/trade/index.php
Bretton Woods Project. IFIs on trade: “enormous investment” but to what end? Bretton Woods Update, Number 45 – March April 2005
Integrated Framework website. http://www.integratedframework.org/
International Monetary Fund and International Development Association. Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers – Operational Issues. Prepared by the Staffs of the IMF and the World Bank. December 10, 1999. http://www.imf.org/external/np/pdr/prsp/poverty1.htm#I
IMF Factsheet. The IMF’s Trade Integrated Mechanism (TIM). March 2005 http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/tim.htm
Basel Committee on Banking Supervision website. http://www.bis.org/bcbs
IDB website. IDB Support for Integration in Latin America and the Caribbean. www.iadb.org/EXR/AM/2003/eng/issuebriefs/am_integ.cfm
ADB News Release. ADB, WTO Agree to Join Efforts to Promote Trade in Asia. 9 May 2002. http://www.adb.org/Documents/News/2002/nr2002076.asp
Dukgeun Ahn. WTO Disciplines Under the IMF Program: Congruence or Conflict. In Mitsuo Matsushita and Dukgeun Ahn (eds) 2004. WTO and East Asia, New Perspectives. London: Cameron May. Pp.25-38. http://www.worldtradelaw.net/articles/ahnimf.pdf
BBC website. Analysis: Mixed Feelings at Monterey. 23 March 2002 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1889536.stm
George Monbiot. Getting Into Bed With Big Business: The UN is no longer just a joke. It is becoming the villain of the piece. The Guardian, 31 August 2000. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,361716,00.html
UN Website: http://www.un.org/docs/ecosoc/meetings/2005/bwi2005/
UN General Assembly/Economic and Social Council. Summary by the President of the Economic and Social Council of the special high-level meeting of the Council with the Bretton Woods institutions, the World Trade Organization and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (New York, 16 April 2005). 2 June 2005. http://www.un.org/docs/ecosoc/meetings/2005/bwi2005/President%27sSummary.pdf
UN General Assembly. The Monterrey Consensus: status of implementation and tasks ahead. Report of the Secretary-General. I June 2005. http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N05/370/07/PDF/N0537007.pdf?OpenElement
UN General Assembly. In larger freedom: towards development, security and human rights for all. Report of the Secretary-General. p.5 http://www.un.org/largerfreedom
UN Millennium Development Goals website. http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/
Joseph Yu. Kofi Annan’s ‘In Larger Freedom’: Still not free from the neoliberal strategy. IBON Features. Vol XI No 11. April 2005 http://www.ibon.org
UNCTAD Trade and Development Report 1998: Financial Instability, Growth in Africa. pp. V. and 55. http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/tdr1998_en.pdf
see Aziz Choudry. Bilateral Trade and Investment Deals: BITs a serious challenge for global justice movements. Z Magazine, December 2003 http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Dec2003/choudry1203.html
Kavaljit Singh. Trading Away Capital Controls. 12 April 2003. http://www.ased.org/artman/publish/printer_72.shtml
Jagdish Bhagwati and Daniel Tarullo. A ban on capital controls is a bad trade-off.
Financial Times, 17 March 2003
Gerard Greenfield. The Success of Being Dangerous: Resisting Free Trade & Investment Regimes. Studies in Political Economy, Spring 2001. http://www.global-labour.org/greenfield1.htm
Stephen Greenberg and Nhlanhla Ndlovu. Civil Society Relationships.  www.interfund.org.za/pdffiles/vol5_two/greenberg.pdf
Edward Abbey. 1976. The Monkey Wrench Gang. New York: Avon Books.

ENDS

Aussies committed to growing Pacific trade

Kao,  this is bucket loads of Australian Gubbament bullshit, continuing to drive neo-liberal and free trade agendas in the Pacific is madness check this out :

The resulting debt crisis provided the means by which the Bretton Woods Institutions could further entrench themselves as the implementation agents of the globalisation process. The US Government chose to empower the institutions to lend to the indebted countries that desperately needed capital in order to remain financially solvent; but in order for countries to access these loans, the countries were required to implement the so-called "Washington Consensus" policy prescriptions: trade liberalisation, privatisation of the public services, deregulation of economic management and economic austerity measures. In this way, the institutions were authorised to become the managers of a crisis that they had helped to create

http://newmatilda.com/2008/10/17/business-usual-world-bank-and-imf-bosses

Haere Atu, get off Aboriginal Land and get out the Pacific

21/10/2008

http://www.fijilive.com/news_new/index.php/news/show_news/9827

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The Australian Government says it is committed to promote stability and trade growth with Pacific island countries.

Australia’s Trade Minister, Simon Crean, said the government was working closely with its Pacific neighbours to strengthen their capacities to trade everything in the region and beyond.

Crean, in a statement to the second Biennial Sir Alan Westerman lecture in Australia, said his government was doing this through its ongoing commitment to fund regional education and training initiatives, including the recently announced Pacific seasonal worker pilot scheme.

He said it was clear that sustainable economic development in the region could not be achieved through development assistance alone.

“Our experience – like that of most other nations – shows that full participation in world markets is a powerful driver of domestic economic growth,” Crean said.

“At this time of global financial turmoil, strengthening the international trading system is essential – and we therefore need to galvanize our efforts in order to conclude the WTO Doha Round.

“However, Australia fully understands that trade liberalisation on its own is not enough to drive economic development.

“Many developing countries have not been, and are not now, in a position to take full advantage of the potential benefits of trade. They include some of our Pacific neighbours.”

Crean said Australia believed the greater regional economic integration would provide significant gains for Pacific island economies.

He highlighted the recent Pacific Islands Forum meeting in Niue where leaders agreed they undertook to work towards starting negotiations on the regional economic arrangement known as ‘PACER Plus’ at the next Forum Leaders meeting in 2009.

“Australia wants to help the Pacific engage more deeply with the regional economy, but to do so in a way that helps them take full advantage of the opportunities of greater market access,” Crean said.

“We will work with our Pacific neighbours to strengthen their capacities to trade within the region and beyond. We are committed to funding regional education and training initiatives, including through the recently announced Pacific Seasonal Worker Pilot Scheme.

“Australia values its close, collaborative relationship with the countries and communities of the Pacific. This is our region, and we are determined to see it prosper and grow.”

Pacific states warned on EU deal

21/10/2008

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The Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) says it’s not too late for Pacific ACP states to reconsider their stand on the Economic Partnership Agreement the EU wants them to sign.

The warning comes as Caribbean ACP state signed an Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union (EU).

The agreement will, among other things, allow up-front access to EU markets for Caribbean exports.

PANG said “Pacific leaders can still avoid signing a disastrous deal like the EPA signed by the Caribbeans”.

The EU says partnership will assist Caribbean exporters meet EU and international standards.

Other key benefits of the EU-Caribbean EPA include:
•    Gradual opening up of Caribbean markets with extensive safeguards to protect local jobs and sensitive sectors;
•    Freeing up trade in the services sector to promote growth and investment;
•    Promotion of cooperation in innovation programmes;
•    Protection of labour and environment standards in the Caribbean;

According to the EU, the EPA will mean much closer cooperation and dialogue between the two regions on all these issues and is backed with substantial EU development aid. 

The EPA, which aims to strengthen ties between the two regions and promote regional integration in the Caribbean, is the first comprehensive North-South trade and development agreement in the global economy.

It includes a package of measures to stimulate trade, investment and innovation, and to promote sustainable development, build a regional market among Caribbean countries and help eliminate poverty.

PANG coordinator Maureen Penjueli said it was important Pacific ministers took a sobering lesson from the Caribbean experience.


"It contains virtually nothing for the Caribbean, but instead opens the Caribbean to European exports, businesses and service providers, and contains new rules on trade that have been rejected by developing countries at the WTO.”

This deal is not a recipe for economic partnership, but a menu to serve European economic interests, she said.

The EU is negotiating with 76 nations across Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (the ACP) all at once.

The Pacific Trade ministers meeting in Nadi continues.

G20 Defendants County Court

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Free trade warning

By WESLEY MORGAN
Monday, October 20, 2008

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Pacific civil society has deep concerns about new free trade deal with Europe.

Pacific Trade Ministers are meeting today in Nadi, Fiji, to discuss a free trade deal that will shape trading relations with the European Union for decades to come.

Trade ministers from across the region will be deciding on a way forward in negotiations for a new Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the EU.
Just last week Caribbean leaders meeting in Barbados signed their own EPA with the EU amid warnings the deal could undermine development in the region.
For the past ten months Caribbean leaders have dragged their feet on signing the EPA which has been the subject of great controversy in Caribbean media and parliaments.
Academics, trade unions and civil society have called for a renegotiation of the deal to make it more 'development friendly' and the President of Guyana said he would only sign the deal if he was forced.
At the moment, only Guyana and Haiti have yet to sign the Caribbean EPA.
Pacific trade ministers, meeting today and tomorrow to discuss the Pacific's own EPA with the EU, have formally told the Europeans they are not interested in negotiating a deal that reflects the Caribbean one.
In June, the Pacific's chief trade negotiator, Hans Joachim Keil, penned a letter to the (then) EU Commissioner for Trade, Peter Mandelson, explaining that the Pacific wants an EPA containing an optional deal on goods, but does not want to negotiate on services, investment and intellectual property rights at this time.
This appeared to have been accepted by the EU.
Such a deal would satisfy the World Trade Organisation, but the EU is now demanding more from the Pacific.
During meetings held in Brussels last month, the EU refused to discuss areas of interest to the Pacific such as providing strong infant industry protection in the EPA until the Pacific agreed to begin negotiations on services and investment.
Maureen Penjueli, coordinator of the Pacific Network on Globalisation, said Pacific leaders can still avoid signing a "disastrous" deal like the EPA signed by the Caribbean.
She said it was important Pacific ministers took a sobering lesson from the Caribbean experience.
"The EPA signed last week is not about the sustainable development of small Caribbean developing countries," said Ms Penjueli.
"It contains virtually nothing for the Caribbean, but instead opens the Caribbean to European exports, businesses and service providers, and contains new rules on trade that have been rejected by developing countries at the WTO.
This deal is not a recipe for economic partnership, but a menu to serve European economic interests." Caribbean states tried to secure new access to the European market for Caribbean people to work in the EU as part of the "services" chapter in the agreement.
This was also an objective originally being sought by the Pacific, however, many in the Caribbean argue that the conditions the EU included in the Caribbean deal make it unworkable.
The Caribbean Cultural Industries Network has said that "on the face of what has been agreed Bob Marley and countless other top Caribbean artists would be 'ineligible' to work in Europe under the EPA" so restrictive are the conditions.
The Pacific has refused to negotiate on services because the EU has rejected Pacific proposals to allow more workers from the region into the EU.
But the Pacific Network on Globalisation argues that there are other reasons for the Pacific Trade Ministers to stand strong and seek a development deal.
"Negotiating a 'comprehensive EPA' such as the Caribbean's could lead to a range of problems," said Ms Penjueli.
"Such a deal would reduce Pacific countries' ability to regulate foreign investments in the public interest, could lead to an undermining of access to services (including essential services such as education and healthcare), and would restrict the ability to nurture Pacific businesses and industries.
"It would also impose a long list of expensive obligations on Pacific states."
Ms Penjueli said Pacific ACP trade ministers should defend the right to use a mixture of policy tools to promote development including the right to impose export taxes and nurture infant industries.
The EU had previously proposed that a "subgroup" of countries may wish to negotiate separately from the region, but this had been rejected by Pacific ministers.
"Pacific ministers from across the region should maintain regional solidarity and uphold the decision to suspend negotiations on services and investment," Ms Penjueli said.
"Our leaders have said before, and should always bear in mind, that it is better to walk away from a deal that undermines our development prospects than bow to EU pressure."
Notes:
* Pacific ACP Trade Ministers are meeting in Nadi, Fiji, at the Novotel Hotel (October 20-21).
* The EU is negotiating with 76 nations across Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (the ACP) all at once. Despite a deadline to complete negotiations before the end of 2007, most ACP nations resisted signing any kind of deal with the EU, while others have signed an interim-EPA because if they did not, Europe would have raised tariffs on their exports to the EU.
* In the Pacific, Fiji and PNG initialled interim-EPAs in late 2007 to avoid tariff hikes on tuna and sugar exports.
* The deal with the Caribbean is the first 'comprehensive' EPA the EU has managed to secure.
* Wesley Morgan is the Information, Education and Communications officer for the Pacific Network on Globalisation.

Why Indigenous People of the World Are Losing Out

By Terence Gomez

2008/10/05

LAST month, members of the Indigenous Peoples Network of Malaysia (JOAS) tried unsuccessfully to submit a memorandum to the king urging, among other things, that the government honour its commitment to abide by the United Nations Declaration for the Rights of Indigenous People (Undrip). The incident, on the first anniversary of Undrip, raised an urgent question: why is it that, despite the burgeoning number of international charters and national laws across the world that assert and protect their rights, the majority of indigenous peoples find themselves increasingly subjected to discrimination, exploitation and dispossession?

And, as the Malaysian protest suggests, why is it likely that in spite of charters such as the Undrip, we will continue to see numerous conflicts of mismatched proportions between unempowered indigenous peoples and governments, multinational companies (MNCs) and international financial institutions (IFIs) worldwide?

Most of these clashes between indigenous peoples, governments and IFIs have arisen due to differing interpretations of the term "development". For indigenous peoples, the key issues include not just the right to protect and preserve their ancestral lands, but also often their very survival as a community.

Governments, meanwhile, argue that they are trying to eradicate poverty and offer citizens, including indigenous peoples, a better standard of living.

IFIs contend that they are providing funds to support the goals of national governments, while MNCs publicise that they have been commissioned to implement projects to attain these objectives.

Yet the scale and scope of the problems confronting indigenous peoples as a result of developmental plans implemented by IFIs and governments is monumental, even baffling.

The primary cause for the numerous discrepancies between the rhetoric and reality of these charters and legislation is the support of governments and IFIs for large-scale exploitation of natural resources, including oil and mineral deposits, extensive privatisation programmes and the construction of huge infrastructure projects, specifically dams.

The issue of the rights of indigenous peoples to their natural resources, particularly sub-soil resources, also continues to be controversial, as a majority of governments retain ownership and control over resources.

With little or no institutional support, the enforcement of indigenous peoples' rights has often proven to be extremely weak.

One key factor for understanding this paradox is the way in which power is exercised within governments and international institutions, and between governments and indigenous groups.

Following the major ideological shifts introduced in the 1980s by the conservative but extremely influential Prime Minister of Britain, Margaret Thatcher, and the United States' President, Ronald Reagan, institutions like the World Bank began adopting and espousing neoliberal ideas, which were reflected in their lending conditions.

The primary contention of neo-liberalism is that the way to achieve sustained economic growth is through the retreat of the government from the economy and the liberalisation of the private sector, an issue that became the basis for the approval of loans by IFIs.

Neoliberals further argue that economic growth in developing countries can only be achieved through a combination of market deregulation, fiscal discipline, reduction of public expenditure involving also privatisation to encourage competition, promotion of foreign direct investment and trade liberalisation.

Privatisation of government agencies, assets and services, as well as major new infrastructure projects, constituted a key component of the IFI loan conditionality framework.

That has resulted in numerous serious problems, including the creation of private monopolies in sectors previously under public control.

Privatising public services tended to concentrate control over utilities, services and resources in developing countries in the hands of MNCs, at the same time that government oversight in these sectors was also reduced considerably.

Privatisation of public services such as water and energy supply was especially contentious as it involved major dam projects and further marginalised the poorer and more vulnerable sections of the population in the developing world.

While privatisation was supposed to have reduced the cost of water and electricity, in a number of countries, new tariffs were imposed to improve the viability of private firms in these sectors.

The increased cost of utilities now supplied by private firms brought into question the main justification for privatisation: government capacity to deliver utility services efficiently, cheaply and universally.

Governments, even in the developing world, have shown the capacity to provide water and electricity at low rates. By undermining the government's capacity to deliver key public services, IFIs have facilitated the control by MNCs of these important resources.

Governments and MNCs have, however, been most publicly discredited for human rights violations and environmental degradation in the implementation of large-scale privatised dam-building projects which, instead of providing the promised benefits of increased economic activity and more widely available electricity, have displaced large numbers of indigenous communities.

The construction of dams in the Philippines (such as the San Roque Dam), Malaysia (the Bakun Dam) and India (the Sardar Sarovar Project along the Narmada River) illustrates this, leading to the relocation of settlements and significant degradation of the land.

Meanwhile, the active promotion of resource extraction, a common condition in IFI loan conditions, has resulted in increasingly unsustainable levels of extraction and environmental damage, often perpetuated by MNCs.

The outcome of large-scale resource extraction projects by MNCs in Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, India, the Philippines and Papua New Guinea, ostensibly implemented to help finance development and reduce poverty, illustrates the far-reaching effects of such activities.

As resource extraction increased, environmental and social crises became increasingly pronounced as a result of the displacement of peoples, deterioration in general health due to pollutants and severe environmental degradation.

In the Philippines, IFI-type recommendations were adopted following complaints by the United States, Australia and New Zealand -- all three reluctant to endorse the Undrip -- that local legislation prohibited foreign entities from owning mining companies.

In 1995, the Philippine government introduced the Mining Act, which allowed for 100 per cent foreign ownership of mining firms. The introduction of this legislation led to huge interest from leading foreign firms in this sector.

Antonio Tujan, Jr, a political analyst from the Philippines, would later argue that "the Mining Act is a clear example of how the neoliberal economic paradigm is translated into the wholesale opening up of Third World natural resources to corporate exploitation".

Despite increasing international awareness of the situation of indigenous peoples, protective charters and legislation remain theoretically-orientated rather than practical.

Unless these vast asymmetries of power, presented by conflicting conceptions of development, are reformed, indigenous peoples will continue to be marginalised.

At the Undrip event last month, JOAS member Mark Bujang stressed that the Orang Asal are not anti-development. But, he said: "We want to be included in the decision-making process."

The need now is urgent for international agencies and governments to devolve power to indigenous peoples. They must create inclusive consultative platforms that will provide them with an avenue to participate in decisions that could impinge on their way of life and to determine their own development path.

The writer is associate professor of political economy at Universiti Malaya. He can be contacted at terencegomez@hotmail.com

Free trade protest today- Poneke/Wellington

The China-New Zealand free trade agreement comes into effect tomorrow (October 1st) and the event will be celebrated with a "Shooting Yourself in the Foot" competition at parliament.

Competitors are welcome to turn up at 12 noon on Wednesday on parliament lawn. The best impersonation of a New Zealand politician or bureaucrat shooting them self in the foot will be presented with a cheap plastic toy.

The event has been organised by the Wildcat Anarchist Collective. Wildcat International Trade and Investment Spokesperson Sam Buchanan says free trade disempowers workers.

"Free trade gives companies the option of choosing which country’s laws suit them best – jobs are moved to places where workers have less power.

"We are not saying jobs should not be moved to China because New Zealand workers deserve to benefit at the expense of Chinese workers, but that jobs should stay in jurisdictions where workers are relatively empowered. Globalised ‘free trade’ does the opposite of this – disempowerment of workers becomes a ‘comparative advantage’ and an attraction to investors," says Mr Buchanan.

Ends

Maritime Union criticizes Myanmar connection in free trade deal

The Maritime Union of New Zealand says a free trade deal signed with ASEAN nations including the military dictatorship of Myanmar is bad for workers. Maritime Union General Secretary Trevor Hanson says a free trade deal including Myanmar will boost the violently anti-worker regime in Myanmar and threatened workers rights.

He says the Maritime Union has many concerns about the treatment of Burmese maritime workers, some of whom work in New Zealand waters, and who have been mistreated and abused in the past.The Maritime Union has previously spoken out about the murder of Ko Moe Naung, a Seafarers' Union of Burma (Myanmar) organizer in the Ranong region, who was killed by Burmese military forces on 19 May 2005.

The Seafarers' Union of Burma is a fellow affiliate with the Maritime Union of New Zealand to the International Transport Workers' Federation.

Ko Moe was tortured to death over three hours during interrogation at 8-Mile Village Army Base LIR 431 in Kawthaung, Burma.

Ko Moe was targeted by the Myanmar regime as he was a dedicated trade union leader, who was organising Burmese fishermen and migrant workers from Burma at the Ranong area.

Mr Hanson says free trade deals mean that New Zealand is now effectively endorsing dictatorships such as Burma which murder workers such as Ko Moe Naung.

He says the Maritime Union has a long history of opposing repressive regimes, refusing to work on American nuclear warships in New Zealand harbours and supporting the struggle against apartheid.

"New Zealand waterfront workers refused to load pig iron for Japan before World War 2, which they were denounced for, but shortly afterwards the pig iron was coming back towards us as bullets."

Mr Hanson says sometimes doing the right thing comes with a cost.

He says the Maritime Union is extremely concerned that free trade deals will mean the use of short term, casual labour imported across borders to drive down wages and conditions, a problem that is now occurring around the world.

ENDS

For further information please contact Maritime Union General Secretary Trevor Hanson on 021390585 or 04 801 7614

Related

• http://www.munz.org.nz
• http://www.itfglobal.org/solidarity/solidarity-558.cfm

MAKING WAVES

: OPPORTUNITIES FOR RECLAIMING DEVELOPMENT IN THE PACIFIC INFORMING CIVIL SOCIETY RESPONSES TO THE FREE TRADE AGENDA:

Abstract

The Pacific Island Countries currently face concerted pressure (from donor countries and international financial institutions) to ‘integrate into the global economy’ through implementing new free trade agreements.

The model of extensive trade liberalisation is currently being implemented through interlocking stages – bilaterally through the Pacific Island Countries Trade Agreement (PICTA), negotiations for a new Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the EU, and with Australia and NZ under the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER), and multilaterally through the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

Free traders argue that the Pacific will benefit from cheaper imports, increased investment in the region and improvements in efficiency of Pacific business and service suppliers. However, it is widely acknowledged that trade liberalisation will have very real costs for societies and economies – in terms of lost government revenue, business closures and job losses, and undermined access to essential services.

Governments will also lose important ‘policy space’ that can be used to stimulate development, and regulate trade and investment in the social interest.

Concerns have been raised by civil society organisations, church groups and trade unions that free trade will hurt workers and communities in the Pacific, and that the ‘benefits’ of trade liberalisation are far from proven.

This paper provides an up-to-date analysis of the FTA negotiations currently facing the region, and potential implications for the region if our governments choose to sign new FTAs. It also offers a critical analysis of the approach Pacific governments have taken to engaging new trade
negotiations, and considers the role of trade unions and civil society in engaging the trade talks.

This paper is intended to give Pacific civil society organisations (CSOs) the critical tools required to understand the push towards free trade in the Pacific, and to engage the process more effectively. National, regional and international government processes for negotiating new FTAs are outlined, aiming to offer CSOs a picture of where, when and how they might better intervene in the trade decision making process. Finally, this paper offers some suggestions for coordinated CSO policy in relation to the push towards free trade in the Pacific.

This report has been prepared by Maureen Penjueli, Coordinator, the Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) and Wesley Morgan, Communications Officer, PANG. This paper has been prepared in collaboration with Nick Braxton, Advocacy and Research Officer, Oxfam New Zealand, and Professor Jane Kelsey, Professor of Law, Auckland University.


Acknowledgements

The Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) plays the role of the Pacific regional “peoples’ watchdog on trade issues”. Established in 2000 by regional NGOs concerned that Pacific civil society was being left out of the debate on trade liberalisati on and that the free-trade agenda lacked a focus on key goals of human development and poverty reduction.

PANG receives support from a number of organisations and individuals, who deserve a special mention for their help in producing this report.

Without continuing support from the Canadian ecumenical organisation, KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives, PANG would not be able to continue to carry out its important work. KAIROS program coordinator Connie Sorio in particular has demonstrated a much-appreciated faith in the ability of Pacific civil society to engage trade discussions in the region.

In producing this report PANG worked closely with Professor Jane Kelsey, Professor of Law at Auckland University. Professor Kelsey has been a tireless supporter of the campaign for fair trade in the Pacific (and across the globe). Her technical and legal expertise has been invaluable for producing research at PANG. Professor Kelsey has previously completed two major reports on free trade in the Pacific: A People’s Guide to the Pacific’s Economic Partnership Agreement (Negotiations between the Pacific Islands and the European Union pursuant to the Cotonou Agreement 2000), and; A People’s Guide to PACER (The implications for the Pacific Islands of the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER).

Nick Braxton, Advocacy and Research Officer at Oxfam New Zealand also contributed to
the research and writing of this report. Nick completed the section entitled; A poor precedent for the region? Implications of the EU-Caribbean EPA, and provided support throughout the review phases of producing the Making Waves report. Oxfam NZ continues to be a staunch ally of the Pacific in campaigns for fair trade in the region.

An earlier version of this report was produced for a regional trade union conference on free trade in the Pacific, hosted by the International Labour Organisation. The ILO/ACTRAV Pacific Trade Union Seminar on Free Trade, Decent Work, and Social Development in the Pacific was held in Nadi, Fiji, from June 24-26, 2008. PANG would like to thank Mishihiro Ishibashi, Specialist on Workers’ Activities, ILO sub-regional officer for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, for his enthusiastic support during that seminar. PANG would also like to thank Rajeshwar Singh, General Secretary of the Fiji Public Service Association for nominating PANG staff to work as resource people for the ILO seminar.

In solidarity,
Maureen Penjueli
PANG Coordinator
August 2008

Full Report Here

1. Introduction: The push for free trade

For much of the past decade the Pacific Island Countries (PICs) have faced pressure fromdeveloped country partners, international financial institutions and aid donors to move towards trade liberalisation through new free trade agreements (FTAs) and through joining the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

Free trade agreements involving the region include the Pacific Island Countries Trade Agreement (PICTA), the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union, and the extension of the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER) with Australia and NZ to include deeper “economic integration”.

The move towards free trade in the Pacific is driven largely by the interests of business (exporters, service suppliers and potential new investors) based in the Pacific’s developed-country ‘partners’. Businesses in Australia and NZ in particular want to see tariffs reduced on their exports to the Pacific, and changes to laws in the region to allow multinational corporations to establish new enterprises and invest (and remove profits) with reduced obligations to the countries in which they invest.

Alongside these direct commercial interests in trade liberalisation in the Pacific, policy makers from Australia, NZ and the EU rely heavily on neoliberal arguments that trade liberalisation will lead to improvements in industry efficiency, through increased competition and a renewed focus on areas of ‘comparative advantage’. Proponents of new FTAs for the region also argue that consumers will benefit from cheaper imports, and that some export industries will benefit from cheaper inputs to their production lines.

(See Inset Box 1: What ‘free trade’ means for the Pacific for discussion on the arguments for free trade in the Pacific). Other more general arguments are made that new FTAs will help to improve regional cooperation in the Pacific, and will send a ‘positive signal’ that will help address the ‘economic and political marginalisation’ of the region.

In the decades following decolonisation in the Pacific, relations with former colonial powers in Europe, Australia and NZ were marked to a degree by development cooperation and trade preferences (preferential access to markets for Pacific exports).

These relations were cemented under agreements like the South Pacific Regional Trade and Economic Cooperation Agreement (SPARTECA) with Australia and NZ, and the Lom矇 Agreement with the European Union.

During the 1990s, alongside the widespread adoption of neoliberal market policies in the developed world (and among donor organisations and international financial institutions), the rise of a multilateral trade liberalisation instrument (in the WTO), and a proliferation of bilateral free trade deals, this emphasis on development cooperation and trade preferences has been eroded. The rhetoric of development cooperation and special/preferential treatment for smaller developing nations is increasingly being replaced by a hard line ‘everyone must compete on the open market’ policy.

While often conflated with other concepts – like cultural homogenisation, and the spread of new technologies – it is the move towards open and integrated markets that is most often referred to as globalisation. It is important to understand that when Pacific governments are pressured to ‘embrace globalisation,’ this most often refers to pursuing free trade policies and negotiating new FTAs.
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The key question, for Pacific civil society organisations, is whether the free trade deals facing the Pacific will really raise the people’s standards of living, and of work, or will they lower them?

Concerns have been raised by many in the Islands, particularly civil society organisations, trade unions and critical academics, that FTAs will have negative implications for working people in the Pacific. Just some of these concerns are; reductions in government revenue (leading to increased consumption taxes and/or loss of government services), an undermining of access to essential services for poor and rural people through increased pressure for privatisation, a reduction in the ‘policy space’ available to governments to stimulate development, and less access to medicine and education materials through stronger intellectual property rights. It should be noted that Pacific civil society is not alone in being wary of FTAs.

There have been a series of concerns raised by civil society organisations the world over, and
the international trade union movement, and about the employment and development
impacts of the move to free trade.

Civil society organisations in the Pacific are focussed on work that contributes to regional goals of economic growth, sustainable development, good governance and human security – all elements of the Pacific Plan. The challenge of ‘integrating into the global economy’ and expanding trade opportunities is one that has become a preoccupation of Pacific leaders in the past decade.

It is important that Pacific CSOs are a part of the discussion around trade and development in the region. At the moment, the debate is dominated by simplistic assumptions that trade liberalisation will lead to economic growth and development. Pacific CSOs must raise concerns about potential negative impacts of poorly considered trade liberalisation – about the so called ‘adjustment costs’ – to add clarity to the discussion and help Pacific leaders to make realistic assessments of trade policy choices.

However, Pacific CSOs must do more than raise concerns about the FTAs. Pacific civil society can contribute to developing a coherent response to the question “ how can we use international trade to enhance our development?.” Currently, the focus, especially in FTA negotiations, is all too often “how much trade liberalisation can we cope with?”, and in some senses negotiating FTAs has replaced considered trade and development policy in the region.

This is a dead-end approach to development. We know that all of the now-developed countries have used various elements of protection, and support for local industry, to develop to a level where their firms can compete in the global market. This is true for countries in the EU, for developed countries in the region like Australia and NZ, and for the rapidly developing Asian ‘tiger economies’. Even small developing states can use a mix of tariffs, quotas, and investment incentives to govern the market in a way that adds value and stimulates development. Pacific leaders need to retain the ability to make policy choices that will harness trade to the service of development in the region.

To harness the opportunities of international trade, the Pacific needs a renewed focus on addressing real constraints in the region. A focus is needed on building service industry capacity (in tourism for example), supporting niche agricultural and manufacturingproducts, developing new markets (and improving market access) for Pacific exports,
improving management and value-adding of Pacific resources (in areas like mining,
fishing and forestry) and targeting investment at small and medium enterprises.
Renewed commitments are also needed to improving key infrastructure (transport,
electricity, telecommunications etc.) and improving access to health and education
services for Pacific workers.
The FTAs proposed by the EU, and Australia and NZ, will restrict forever the ability of
Pacific governments to favour local firms and service suppliers, or regulate foreign
investment to help stimulate local industry and employment. PICs will lose the ability to
support local businesses to benefit from future opportunities and create local jobs in the
future. For the Pacific, with relatively few developed businesses at present, it is this loss
of policy space that is likely to be the lasting legacy of unjust and misguided trade
liberalisation.

With Pacific governments rapidly committing themselves to FTAs that have not been debated publicly, it is vital that Pacific CSOs understand what is at stake in these agreements, develop effective strategies to engage the trade liberalisation debate, and vigorously resist agreements that would undermine development in the Pacific Islands. This background paper aims to contribute to those goals.

This report focuses on the three key FTA negotiations involving the region (PICTA, the EPA with the EU, and PACER), providing an update and analysis of the negotiations and their content. In particular, this background paper focuses on current discussions for an EPA with the EU, providing an analysis of the implications of the already initialled interim-EPAs (initialled by PNG and Fiji), a review of the example set by the EU- Caribbean EPA and their implications for the Pacific, an analysis of outstanding issues remaining for the negotiations in 2008, and a review of the implications of the EPA negotiations for potential trade negotiations with Australia and NZ (under PACER). Finally, this paper outlines some of the possible scenarios under all three FTAs going ahead, explains ways CSOs can become more involved in the trade talks, and provides suggestions for CSO policy engagement..
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2. Multilateral and bilateral trade liberalisation: complex
and interlocking processes The Pacific Island Countries are surrounded by an ‘alphabet soup’ of complex and inter - related regional and sub-regional governmental and trade processes (see Figure 1 below). These inter-relating processes have implications for the way PICs engage trade
negotiations at the national and regional level.

The FTAs involving the PICs are often described as ‘stepping stones’ towards a deeper commitment to free trade and globalisation, with each new FTA locking the door on going back. PICTA has been seen as the ‘starting point’ for the PICs, leading on to the EPA negotiations, PACER and beyond. The World Bank explained how this works in a report from 2002 entitled Embarking on a Global Voyage: Trade Liberalisation and Complementary Reforms in the Pacific. That report said: In sum, PACER and the Cotonou Agreement have set in motion a process of negotiation of [free trade agreements] between [the PICs] and the EU and Australia and New Zealand, and for providing the United States with similar preferential treatment. The widening of preferential arrangements beyond PICTA is inevitable. Only the timing, extent and benefits are uncertain. This seemingly irreversible and inevitable transition to free trade is increasingly being locked in through FTAs, and is driven by the active policies of the EU, Australia and NZ in the region – and their influence in key institutions like the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS). Understanding how these FTAs are interrelated, and the ways they
relate to each other at an ideological and practical level, is important for Pacific CSOs.
Figure 1: Interlocking ‘steps’ towards free trade in the Pacific Island Countries
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A quick summary of trade and governance processes involved in trade liberalisation in
the Pacific, and ways they are interrelated, are as follows:

2.1 World Trade Organisation (WTO):

(Members: Fiji, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Tonga)

Pacific Island States that are members of the WTO have certain commitments to liberalise trade in goods with all other member countries of the WTO, and receive requests from other member states to liberalise service sectors under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). Vanuatu shelved plans to join the WTO in 2001 after it was found that conditions for Vanuatu’s accession to the WTO contained a range of WTO+ conditions (including demands for a radical liberalisation in services) 1. Vanuatu may yet accede under similar terms and Samoa is currently preparing to join the WTO.

Membership of the WTO has implications for countries that are engaged in regional FTA negotiations that are generally based on WTO principles (though the EU, Australia and NZ are seeking WTO+ provisions from the FTA negotiations). Less than half of the PICs are members of the WTO, so signing onto these FTAs will mean that PICs will have to submit to t radeliberalisation schedules more burdensome than is required of developing states at the WTO even if they are not members of the WTO.

2.2 Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG):

(Members: Fiji, PNG, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu)

The Melanesian Spearhead Group was formed in 1993 by Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu – with Fiji joining in 1998. The MSG was formed to lead the free trade experiment in the Pacific. It applies free trade rules to a small number of key products in which each country has a comparative advantage. The Melanesian governments, especially PNG, argued that the agreement provided a small, gradual and island-only approach to free trade. Free traders have criticised the MSG as limited and weak.

2.3 Pacific Islands Forum (PIF):

(Members: Australia, Cook Islands, Fed. States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall
Islands, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon
Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu).

The Pacific Islands Forum encompasses the 16 island states of the southwest Pacific (excluding French and American territories in the region). The Forum is the region’s premiere political and economic policy organisation. Forum leaders meet annually to develop collective responses to regional issues.

The Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS) is the administrative arm of the Forum, based in Suva, Fiji. PIFS receives more than $30 million each year from member governments and other donors (like the EU). Since the late 1990s – under concerted influence from the EU, Australia, and NZ – PIFS has increasingly focussed on the Vanuatu had to make commitments to liberalise professional services, basic and value-added telecommunication services, environmental, wholesale, retail, insurance, banking services, hotels and restaurants, primary, secondary,
higher, adult and other education services, and sewerage, refuse disposal, sanitation and general construction services.

Kelsey, J (2004a) Acceding Countries As Pawns in a Power Play: A Case Study of the Pacific Islands. Focus on the Global South, August 23, 2004. http://www.focusweb.org/content/view/442/36/
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implementation of a free trade agenda in the Pacific Islands, and ‘economic reform’, ‘regional integration’ and ‘integration of the Islands into the global economy’ are all euphemisms for trade liberalisation in the PICs. Studies and reports into the ‘benefits’ of free trade, programs to develop technical capacity to negotiate new FTAs, and to implement the terms of new FTAs have all been funded by the EU, Australia, and NZ through the PIFS (under programs like the Regional Trade Facilitation Program funded by Australia/NZ and the Pacific Regional Economic Integration Program funded by the EU.)

This focus on trade liberalisation at the Forum Secretariat means it has become an institution for creating political consensus around signing new FTAs. As Fiji -based academic Claire Slatter writes: The Pacific Islands Forum, formerly known as the South Pacific Forum, has played a key role in regional economic restructuring, functioning as a channel for the diffusion of neo-liberal economic ideas and thinking among Pacific Island leaders, and as the principle implementing agency in the externally driven program of ‘reforms’. From 1999, the work of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat began to focus increasingly on trade liberalisation and compliance with WTO principles and trade rules – two regional trade agreements, the Pacific Island Countries Trade Agreement (PICTA) and the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER),

emerged from Secretariat processes2. The Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat has also assumed responsibility for coordinating the Pacific ACP countries (see below) in their negotiations with the EU for a new FTA (the Economic Partnership Agreement) – with key technical staff assisting the Pacific Regional Negotiating Team funded by the EU itself. This has had implications for the
way Pacific countries have approached negotiations with the EU. 2.4 Pacific Island Countries Trade Agreement (PICTA): (Members: Cook islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu).

In 1999 a meeting of Forum Trade Ministers decided to proceed with a PICs-only free trade agreement (excluding Australia and NZ) covering trade in goods between the PICs. PICTA arose to a degree in response to pressure from Australia and NZ for the PICs to begin negotiations for an FTA including those countries. In response the PICs decided to pursue an islands-only FTA (though Australia and NZ bullied PICs to commit to discussing extending free trade to Australia and NZ under PACER, see below).

Originally PICTA covered only liberalisation of goods trade between PICs, but in 2001 Forum Trade Ministers endorsed in principle the integration of services into PICTA based on a “gradual, flexible approach, with sufficient transition periods where appropriate”. PICTA came into force for trade in goods in 2003, and since then six members (Cook Islands, Niue, Fiji, Samoa, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu) have announced their readiness to trade under PICTA. Trading under PICTA preferences commenced in 2007.

Negotiations for the extension of PICTA to include trade in services (including labour
mobility) began in earnest in April of this year, with a subsequent round of negotiations
Slatter, C. (2005) “Treading water in rapids? Non-governmental organisations and resistance to neo-liberalism in Pacific Island States.” Chapter 2: Globalisation and Governance in the Pacific Islands. Australian National University Press.12conducted in June and a final round scheduled for September – with a view towards concluding the new legal text for a trade in services agreement (as an extension of PICTA) by October 2008. (See A stepping stone to where? The Pacific Island Countries Trade Agreement (PICTA), below, for further discussion on current stages of the PICTA negotiations).

2.5 Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER): (Members: Australia, Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands and Tonga).

The Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER) was negotiated alongside PICTA by all Pacific Island Forum members, including Australia and NZ. Officially PACER is an ‘umbrella agreement’ and PICTA is the lesser one. This is not how most PICs see it, as they were interested only in negotiating an FTA among PICs, but Australia and NZ insisted on being included. Under PACER, Forum Island Countries must begin discussions with Australia and NZ
with a view towards negotiating an FTA in 2011, unless certain ‘triggers’ are engaged earlier. PACER stipulates that if Forum Countries sign an FTA with a third-party developed country, this triggers PACER discussions3. Australia and NZ view the initialling of interim EPAs by Fiji and PNG as having pulled that trigger, and are keen to begin discussions on a new FTA as soon as possible.

An informal meeting on PACER has already been held, in May this year in Auckland, between representatives from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), the NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) and representatives from each of the PICs.
PACER is not a free trade agreement, but an ‘economic and trade cooperation’ agreement that includes obligations to look towards negotiating a new FTA. PACER also contains obligations for Australia and NZ to help fund a Regional Trade Facilitation Programme aimed at streamlining and upgrading customs, biosecurity and quarantine processes in the PICs. This was a major incentive for PICs to sign on to PACER.

It is not clear what other elements of ‘economic and trade cooperation’ could be discussed
and negotiated under PACER – labour mobility, improved rules of origin, and new
development funding to address transport infrastructure and other “capacity constraint”
issues are possibilities. It should be noted that Australian and NZ officials have already stopped referring to PACER and now speak exclusively of PACER-Plus, with the ‘Plus’ indicating
negotiations for an actual FTA.

Of the FTAs facing the region PACER is likely to have by far the biggest impact on Pacific economies, societies and environments – due to the much larger volumes of trade with Australia and NZ, and the presence of large, well-established and expansionary corporations in those countries with an interest in the Pacific market.
3
As then Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer explained of the signing of PACER; “The PACER protects Australian trade interests in the event that Forum Island Countries begin negotiations for a free trade agreement or offer improved market access to another developed country”. Pacific Magazine. (2003) Enduring Commitments: An Exclusive Interview with Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer. Pacific Magazine, No. 3, March 2003. Accessed from: http://www.pacificislands.cc/pm32003/index.php Accessed on:5/6/08
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2.6 Pacific members of the African, Caribbean and Pacific group (PACP): (Members: Cook Islands, Fed. States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu).

The EU has a special relationship with its ex-colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (the ACP) that encompasses political and trade relations, and development assistance. This relationship, in acknowledgment of Europe’s historical debt to its ex- colonies, was been marked by the concept of development cooperation in particular. The Lom矇 Agreement (signed between the EU and ACP states in 1975) accepted that the parties involved were not on equal footing and one party (the EU) needed to assist the other (the ACP States) with technical and financial resources to develop capacity. In 2000, the EU and the ACP states signed a new agreement the Cotonou Agreement – in which the EU made an explicit shift from a relationship based on development cooperation to one more focused on trade.

The Cotonou Agreement reflected the new priorities of European powers interested in shedding historical responsibilities to their ex-colonies, and expanding their economic interests. Under the Lom矇 Agreement, ex-colonies had been granted preferential access to European markets for their exports. The Cotonou Agreement outlined the phasing out of these preferences for ACP countries, to be replaced with reciprocal rights for Europe’s goods into ACP markets. As well as reciprocal market access, the EU is seeking to extend the scope of trade relationships to include new areas like services, competition and investment policy and intellectual property rules.

In the Pacific, the Forum Island Countries, excluding Australia and NZ, are all members of the Pacific ACP (PACP) regional grouping – who are currently involved in negotiations with the EU for a new EPA (see below).

2.7 Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA):

Under the Cotonou Agreement, the EU set out to establish new trading arrangements, to be called Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), with all of the ACP nations. The EU envisaged the completion of EPA negotiations, entailing World Trade Organisation compatible and reciprocal market access agreements, by the end of 2007 and sought a waiver from the WTO for the continuation of Lom矇 non-reciprocal preferences (deemed illegal under WTO rules) until December 31 2007.

In late 2007, Fiji and PNG initialed Interim-EPAs covering liberalisation of goods-trade (under threat of increases on tariffs for exports of tuna and sugar). No other PICs have initialed an Interim-EPA. Currently the EU is pressuring PACP states to sign onto a comprehensive EPA covering goods and other areas (services, investment, intellectual property rights etc.) before end-2008. Talks are currently at a stalemate with PACP countries demanding concessions from the EU on labour mobility before they will move ahead with negotiations on areas of interest to the EU. (See David and Goliath: Negotiations for an FTA between the Pacific Island Countries and the EU below).

The EPA negotiations have particular significance for relations with Austr alia and NZ
under the PACER agreement as PACER contains ‘triggers’ that mean PICs will have to look at instigating consultations with Australia and NZ, with a view towards beginning negotiations for a reciprocal market access agreement, should an FTA be signed with a third-party developed country.

It is widely believed that (under PACER commitments) the PICs must offer any market concessions to Australia and NZ that they offer to the EU under any EPA commitments.
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This is not true4 though there will be considerable political pressure brought to bear on the PICs from Australia and NZ, who won’t want to see other parties gaining trade advantages in what they often regard as ‘their lake’. The New Zealand Minister of Trade, Phil Goff, has indicated that an FTA between Australia, NZ and the PICs is necessary to ensure NZ “is not disadvantaged by preferential access to Pacific markets being given to European countries”5. Meanwhile, the (then) Australian Trade Minister, Warren Truss, said in June 2007; “it’s obviously in Australia and New Zealand’s interest that any new deal that the South Pacific countries may do with the EU doesn’t disadvantage Australian exporters into those same countries. 6
4
Article 6(3) of the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations specifies that if Forum Island Countries that have ratified PACER enter a free trade agreement with the EU, then Islands who have signed PACER will be obliged to ‘offer to undertake consultations as soon as practicable with Australia and New Zealand, individually or jointly, with a view to the commencement of negotiation of free trade agreements’. Note that there is no specified time frame to start or complete those negotiations – nor that an agreement should be completed. This clearly leaves Pacific governments the option of refusing to sign any free trade agreement with Australia and NZ, if such a deal is not in their interests.

5
Goff, P. (2007) ‘Preliminary Discussions on Pacific Trade Agreement’ Ministerial Press Release NZ Minister of Trade, 12 June 2007. New Zealand Government. Available at:
http://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/preliminary+discussions+pacific+trade+agreement Accessed on: 16/1/08
6
Pacific Magazine (2007) ‘Pacific Urged to Beware of Trade Agreement Trigger’ Pacific Magazine, 5 October 2007. Available at: http://www.pacificmagazine.net/news/2007/10/05/pacific-urged-to-beware-of-trade-agreement-trigger
Accessed on: 16/1/08


4. David and Goliath: Negotiations for an FTA between the EU and the Pacific

4.1 Background to the EPA negotiations

The European Union (EU) has a long historical debt to the Pacific Island Countries (PICs), including Fiji. For centuries European nations colonised distant lands around the globe, subjugating their peoples, stripping economic and environmental resources, stealing land, and imposing alien laws and systems of government.

The Pacific Islands are certainly no exception. Tens of thousands of Indian labourers were coerced to work for British companies in the sugar plantations of Fiji, islands like Banaba and Nauru were stripped of their phosphate resources to provide rich fertilizer for farmers inAustralia, New Zealand and Europe, thousands of Islanders were captured in raids by slave traders to work the sugar cane fields of Queensland, and natural resources like cotton, beche-de-mere, sandalwood, pearls and copra were all extracted from colonies in the Pacific. The exploitation of colonies in the Pacific (and the Indian sub-continent, Africa and the Caribbean) contributed massively to Europe’s own development and the growth of European economies.
In acknowledgement of this historical debt, a special trading arrangement was established between European nations and their independent ex-colonies in the 1970s. Signed between the EU and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states in 1975 and in force for decades, the Lom矇 Agreement was marked by the concept of development cooperation – a relationship that accepts parties involved are not on an equal footing, and that one party needs to assist the other with technical and financial resources to develop capacity.

In 2000, the EU and the ACP states signed a new agreement – the Cotonou Agreement – in which the EU has made an explicit shift from a relationship based on development cooperation to one more focused on trade. The Cotonou Agreement reflected the new priorities of European powers interested in shedding historical responsibilities to their ex-colonies, and expanding their economic interests. Under the Lom矇 Agreement, ex-colonies had been granted preferential
access to European markets for their exports7. The Cotonou Agreement outlined the phasing out of these preferences for ACP countries, to be replaced with a reciprocal free trade agreement giving unprecedented access for Europe’s goods into ACP markets.

As well as reciprocal market access, the EU is seeking to extend the scope of trade relationships to include new areas like services, competition and investment policy and intellectual property rules. Under the Cotonou Agreement, the EU set out to establish new trading arrangements, to
be called Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), with the ACP nations. The EU envisaged the completion of EPA negotiations, entailing World Trade Organisation- compatible and reciprocal market access agreements, by the end of 2007 and sought a waiver from the WTO for the continuation of Lom矇 preferences until December 31 2007.


9
Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (2007) ‘Pacific ACP countries express deep concern at EU trade deal proposal. Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat Press Release, August 28, 2007. Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, Suva. Available at: http://www.bilateral.org/article.php3?id_article=9518. Accessed on: 16/1/08
10
For extensive discussions on ways the EU could have provided continued market access to Pacific countries in the absence of signing an EPA see: Oxfam Internaional (2007) A Matter of Political Will: How the European Union can maintain market access for African, Caribbean and Pacific countries in the absence of Economic Partnership Agreements. Briefing Note, April 2007.

Further Information:

Resources concerning trade liberalisation in the Pacific are available at official websites such as that of the World Trade Organisation, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund, from Government websites (Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade) from PIC’s, Australia and NZ, from the official websites of the EU and from the website of the ACP group of countries.

Information regarding the international labour movement’s response to free trade, and FTA negotiations in particular, is available at various websites, including those of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the International Trade Union Confederation, etc. A site with good links is the website of the Global Union Research Network, which has a sub-section dealing with regional and bilateral trade agreements. See: http://www.gurn.info/topic/trade/index.html
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10. References
Anon. (2008) Member of Pacific EPA Regional Negotiating Team interviews with PANG.
January 2008.

Braxton, N (2006) Fishing for a future – The advantages and drawbacks of a comprehensive fisheries agreement between the Pacific and the European Union.
Oxfam New Zealand
European Commission (2004) Pacific ACP – EC EPA Negotiations, Joint Road Map. Accessed from: www.trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/html/118922.htm
Accessed on 10/1/07
European Commission (2007) Global Europe: A Stronger Partnership to Deliver Market Access for European Exporters. EC Communication, 18.4.2007 European Commission (2007) Liberalisation of trade in services and the right of establishment in the Economic Partnership Agreement between the EC and Pacific ACP. EC Non-Paper. Accessed at:www.bilaterals.org/article.php3?id_article=6216
Accessed on: 10/2/08.
European Service Forum (2007) Re: Negotiation of services commitments in the European Partnership Agreements. (Letter to European Commission Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, dated 1/11/07). Accessed at: http://www.esf.be/000/index.html
Accessed on 12/2/08
Global Europe, Trade Policy in Practice (2008) Six common misconceptions about Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). European Commission External Trade. Grynberg, R. (2000) Asymmetric reciprocity in the post-Lom矇 framework – Implications for trade relations in the Pacific. Pacific Islands Forum Discussion Paper. Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat.

Grynberg, R and Onguglo, B (2002) A development agenda for the Economic Partnership Agreement between the EU and the Pacific ACP (PACP). Concept Paper. Available at: www.eu-ldc.org/downloads/PACP.doc
Accessed on: 10/1/07
Kelsey, J (2005) A People’s Guide to the Pacific’s Economic Partnership Agreement (Negotiations between the Pacific Islands and the European Union pursuant to the Cotonou Agreement 2000). World Council of Churches Office in the Pacific Kelsey, J (2004) A People’s Guide to PACER (The implications for the Pacific Islands of the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER). Pacific Network on Globalisation.
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Kelsey, J (2004a) Acceding Countries As Pawns in a Power Play: A Case Study of the Pacific Islands. Focus on the Global South, August 23, 2004.
http://www.focusweb.org/content/view/442/36/
Maclellan, N. (2008) Workers for all seasons? Issues from New Zealand’s Recognised
Seasonal Employer (RSE) program. Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University
of Technology. Hawthorn, Australia.

Maclellan N and Mares, P. (2005) “Labour Mobility in the Pacific: Creating seasonal work
programs in Australia”. Chapter 3: Globalisation and Governance in the Pacific Islands.
Australian National University Press.

Mares, P. (2007) “Objections to Pacific seasonal work programs in rural Australia”,
Public Policy, v.2(1), 2007, pp. 68-87.
Millbank, A (2006) A seasonal guest worker program for Australia? Parliamentary Library
Research Brief no. 16, 2005-06, Australian Parliamentary Library, Canberra, May 5
2006.

Available at: http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/RB/2005-06/06rb16.htm
Accessed on: 30/5/08
Oxfam International (2007) A Matter of Political Will: How the European Union can maintain market access for African, Caribbean and Pacific countries in the absence of Economic Partnership Agreements. Briefing Note, April 2007.

Oxfam New Zealand (2007) Weighing the Options – Key issues in the proposed Pacific-
European Economic Partnership Agreement. Oxfam New Zealand. Pacific, EU Joint Text (2007) Interim Partnership Agreement between Pacific States, on the one part, and the European Community, on the other part. Joint Text initialled (by PNG and the EU, and Fiji and the EU) on 23 November, 2007 in Brussels.

Pareti, S (2007) “EPA with Europe in doubt” Island Business Magazine.
Accessed at:
http://www.islandsbusiness.com/islands_business/index_dynamic/containerNameToRep
lace=MiddleMiddle/focusModuleID=17209/overideSkinName=issueArticle-full.tpl
Accessed on 10/1/08
Primack, D (2007) “EPA fails to draw the Pacific closer to the international trading system” Trade Negotiations Insights, Vol. 6. No. 8, December 2007. International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development. Rampa, F & Bilal S. (2006) Alternative (to) EPAs: Possible scenarios for the future ACP trade relations with the EU. European Centre for Development Policy Management.

The Seattle to Brussels Network (2006) The New ‘Global Europe’ Strategy of the EU:
Serving Corporations Worldwide and at Home. November 2006. Accessed at: http://www.bilaterals.org/IMG/pdf/globaleurope_s2balert_nov06.pdf
Accessed on: 10/2/08
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Slatter, C. (2005) “Treading water in rapids? Non-governmental organisations and resistance to neo-liberalism in Pacific Island States.” Chapter 2: Globalisation and Governance in the Pacific Islands. Australian National University Press. South Centre (2007) “Development and Intellectual Property under the EPA Negotiations” South Centre Policy Brief No.6 March, 2007.
Available at: www.southcentre.org
Accessed on 9/1/07
South Centre (2007) “Why Inclusion of Services in the EPAs is Problematic: Legal and
Development Implications” South Centre Policy Brief No.6 March, 2007.
Available at: www.southcentre.org
Accessed on 9/1/07
South Centre (2007) “Demystifying Trade in Services: A Strategic Guide for ACP EPA
Negotiators” South Centre Fact Sheet No.5. South Centre, Geneva.

Further information on PANG: Please note that further resources on trade and economic justice issues in the Pacific are available at www.pang.org.fj.


A report prepared by the Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) for the
2008 Annual Pacific Civil Society Organisation (CSO) Forum.
Auckland, NZ. August 12-14.
Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG)
20 Desvouex Road, GPO Box 17105, Suva. FIJI ISLANDS.
Ph: (679) 3316 722 Fax: (679) 331 3466
Email: coordinator@pang.org. fj Web: www.pang.org. fj