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Would you take care in choosing your first actions and words on your first day in office as President of the European Council? I know I would. On December 1, new Council President Donald Tusk decided that his first political act would be a phone call with the President of the USA, Barack Obama. This was a tactile move to demonstrate that the President of the Council highly values EU relations with the US. The important questions for us are, “what did he want to talk about, and what is our take on it?”

Their first topic of conversation was the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), i.e. the proposed EU-US trade agreement. Both presidents agreed to “step up their efforts towards reaching agreement”. We have reservations and questions about TTIP that we voiced last Friday when we met with Commissioner Malmström who is in charge of trade negotiations.

We want to see social, health and education services excluded from TTIP. Why? Because we believe that no matter whom the service provider is, or the source of funding used (public or private), a profit-making logic should not prevail over the general interest of our population – as enshrined in the mission of social, health and education services. We also want to make sure that the social services supported in previous EU legislation, such as the new public procurement directive and the services directive, remain protected and not undermined by TTIP.

Finally, we believe that the EU and the US have sufficiently strong legal mechanisms already in place to reassure foreign investors; therefore, we do not want an alternative dispute mechanism (ISDS) when companies are not satisfied with national legislation. This is a dangerous, slippery road, as we can see from the impact of ISDS in other countries. For example, when public policy objectives have been challenged in some countries (e.g. Philip Morris vs. Australia, Centurion Health vs. Canada, Eli Lilly vs. Canada, Achmea vs. Slovak Republic), national governments have been forced to pay compensation amounting to millions of dollars, or have been pushed into opening their markets in order to avoid potentially costly trials.

Commissioner Malmström took our concerns into account and commited to giving them further thought throughout the negotiation process, as well as engaging in an ongoing dialogue with us.

I hope that we will have the opportunity to meet President Donald Tusk, as we did on a yearly basis with his predecessor. It would be a great opportunity to discuss whether he is as open to our concerns as he is to President Obama’s. Since we are here in Brussels, we are not just a phone call away!

Let’s engage!

Pierre Baussand, Director