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The 6th round of secret negotiations on the Trade in Services Agreement took place in Geneva during last week. The participants (the EU, Australia, Canada, Chile, Taiwan, Colombia, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Liechtenstein, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, South Korea, Switzerland, Turkey and the US) call themselves the “Really Good Friends of Services” and are the strongest advocates of service liberalisation.

Simultaneously, Public Services International (PSI) launched its special report on the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) versus Public Services. The report shows that the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) will put public services, including education, at risk. This is because the proposed agreement could make it impossible for future governments to restore public services to public control, even in cases of failure with private service delivery. It would also restrict a government’s ability to regulate key sectors e.g. university and school accreditation and degree-granting authority. As pointed out in the report, treating public services as commodities for trade creates a fundamental misconception of public services. In particular, public services are designed to provide vital social and economic necessities – such as education and health care. Public services exist because markets will not produce these outcomes. Trade negotiators state that governments maintain the “right to regulate”. However, this is only valid as long as in accordance with the trade agreement. Governments will need to be prepared to face challenges and dispute juries.

Rosa Pavanelli, General Secretary of Public Services International (PSI), says: “This is an attempt to secretly extend the most damaging parts of the infamous GATS agreement (General Agreement on Trade in Services) that previously sparked global protests. The aim of public services should not be to make profits for large multinational corporations.  Ensuring that failed privatisations can never be reversed is free market ideology gone mad.” Pavanelli emphasizes that, “It is fundamentally undemocratic for parliaments to permanently hand over the people’s democratic mandate to multinational companies.”

ETUCE demands that education in particular and public services in general be excluded entirely from the negotiations of the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA). This is the same demand as in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).