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Last week I participated in the Civil Society Dialogue on the Trade in Services agreement (TiSA), a multi-lateral agreement that the European Union is negotiating with 24 countries that are part of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The European Commission gave stakeholders an update on the progress made in the last round of negotiations that took place last July.

I asked if the Commission is going to take into account the European Parliament’s recommendation to exclude public services, irrespectively of how they are organised and funded – publicly or privately – from the scope of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Of course the Parliament resolution was about TTIP negotiations, but when it comes to the treatment of public services, the issue at stake is the same in all agreements, including TiSA. Therefore the Commission should ensure consistency among different trade agreements.

The Commission’s reply was that they will exclude public services from TiSA in the same way as they are excluded from the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS): a horizontal reservation allowing for monopolies and exclusive rights, complemented by reservations (in other words, exclusions) on specific sectors. They consider this to be enough to protect public services, as they think that this approach has not caused any problem over twenty years. It seems that they are going to follow the same approach in TTIP too, meaning that they will not follow the Parliament’s recommendation.

We do not consider these responses satisfactory. In April we sent a letter to European Commissioner Malmström, responsible for Trade, calling for a broad exclusion of social, health and education services, irrespective if they are publicly or privately funded. We also provided concrete examples (Annex B) of Services of General Interest that are funded by a mix of public and private sources in the social services sector (namely social housing, services for people or groups who are marginalised or excluded or hit the most by the economic crisis, services for persons with disabilities, childcare services, and work integration), health and education. These cases are meant to illustrate that nowadays, at least in some member states, many social, health and education services which are of general interest are privately funded or supported by a hybrid of public and private funding. We also listed concrete questions to be clarified (Annex C) to which we haven’t had an answer yet.

We consider that the rules that were set twenty years ago with GATS do not reflect the reality any more. The criterion to decide on the inclusion or exclusion of services in the agreements should be the mission of the services, namely if they respond or not to the general interest, and not their source of funding. TTIP and TiSA should give an opportunity to update those rules. This is especially true as a social impact assessment study about the possible impacts of TTIP and TiSA on public services haven’t been carried out. Our concerns regard whether TTIP and TiSA will undermine universal access to affordable services for all people in Europe. Businesses will choose to provide services in urban and wealthy areas and will choose those sectors of social, health and education services which are profitable. This might exacerbate the creation of a dual system of service provision, leaving to public authorities and charities the provision in peripheral and rural areas and for target groups with complex social needs.

It is generally recognised that public services play an important role in promoting social cohesion and reducing inequalities among people and among regions. TTIP and TiSA will increase the provision of social, health and social services for those people who can already pay for them. Is this a priority for the EU when more than 23 million people are unemployed and almost 123 million are at risk of poverty and social exclusion? And many of them already encounter difficulties in accessing essential services.

Our hope is to continue having a constructive dialogue with the Commission. A prerequisite for a constructive dialogue is that stakeholders’ voices and concerns are listened to and addressed.