Pleas to drop Free Trade talks [1]
Friday, December 12, 2014 - 15:10
A network of civil groups in the Pacific has made a plea for Pacific Island Governments to end current free trade negotiations, ahead of the Pacific Islands Forum dialogue on PACER-Plus in Nadi today.
The proposed regional free trade agreement known as “PACER-Plus” is currently into its Fourth Non-State Actors dialogue in Nadi, between 14 Pacific Island states (including Tonga), Australia and New Zealand.
An organisation known as the Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) released a letter yesterday calling for an “immediate suspension” of negotiations.
The letter expressed dissatisfaction with current PACER-Plus negotiations, which it claimed were unfavourable to Pacific Island countries (FICs).
The letter stated “Civil society organizations in the Pacific are very concerned that it is the FICs that have repeatedly made serious concessions on desired outcomes for a development focused agreement in order to see the negotiations progress, and because of the outweighed influence of Australia and New Zealand.”
“There appears to be the mistaken belief that FICs can entice foreign investment to their countries through up to binding commitments that actually have the effect of limiting FIC ability to regulate various aspects of finance, trade and foreign direct investment.”
The letter declared three proposals for Pacific Island countries:
- “The immediate suspension of the PACER-Plus negotiations until there has been informed, comprehensive dialogue with civil society to attain whether there is a popular mandate for such negotiations;
- “The immediate release of all negotiating texts to allow full, comprehensive and informed input from civil society;”
- “Following the release of the texts a properly funded social, cultural, environmental and human rights impact assessment be undertaken to determine the impacts of any proposed outcome.”