International

SP Euro-MP Anne-Marie Mineur is urging the European Council to make the mandates for two far-reaching free trade treaties immediately public. The Council today empowered the European Commission to open negotiations on the free trade treaties with  Australia and New Zealand. The mandate for the negotiations is broad and includes, amongst other things, trade in goods and services, and access to public tenders. 

It's also known that the treaties are of a familiar stripe, directed at the removal of as many obstacles to trade as possible. Anne-Marie Mineur is exasperated by the Commission's insistence on continuing to pursue its neoliberal agenda, which serves only the interests of the multinationals. “This sort of free trade treaty is aimed at getting rid of laws and regulations which uphold our standards of protection of workers, consumers and the environment,” she says. “The principle of the free market economy has been declared sacred, at the cost of the wellbeing of people, animals and the environment. Meanwhile the public, their elected representatives and social and environmental organisations are being kept in the dark when it comes to the EU's negotiating position. It's time we put an end to this shocking lack of transparency.” 

Mineur also opposes the haste with which both the Council and the Commission are looking to complete an enormous series of free trade treaties. “The Council and Commission appear deaf to the massive protests against this sort of agreement,” she complains. “The public's opinion isn't taken on board, multinationals are dictating the agenda and elected representatives cannot do their work. The SP will keep up the fight for a fair, transparent way of conducting trade.”