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Last week the European Parliament’s International Trade committee voted on the draft report on the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), authored by Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Viviane Reding.

We welcome the vote of this report. While pursuing the ambition to negotiate a free trade agreement in services with 23 members of the World Trade Organisation, it sets clear red lines that shouldn’t be crossed in the negotiations.

One red line is to ensure that public services in the EU (also known as services of general economic interest, or SGEI) are not put under further pressure, due to increased competition with third countries’ companies, thus affecting their quality, affordability and universal access.

In the TiSA report, MEPs confirmed the call they made when they adopted the resolution on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) last July: they called on the Commission to fully exclude current and future Services of General Economic Interest. Both the TTIP resolution and the TiSA report clarify that these services should be excluded irrespective of how they are provided (by public authorities themselves or by private parties, being non-profit or for profit) and funded (publicly or privately). This differs from the European Commission’s approach that excludes only the services that are publicly funded.

The TiSA report goes even further than the TTIP resolution. It calls for the introduction of a “gold standard” clause which would ensure increased legal certainty. The concept of a gold standard clause was launched by Social Platform and the European Confederation of Independent Trade Unions (CESI) – see Annex A of our letter to Cecilia Malmstrom, European Commissioner responsible for trade.

The gold standard clause would ensure that the exclusion of public services through the so-called “public utilities clause” is extended to all modes of service supply: for example, not only when service suppliers are present in the territory of the Party of the agreement, but also when they are provided cross-border.

An additional very positive novelty introduced by the TiSA report is the encouragement to apply the gold standard clause to all trade agreements.

In conclusion, the TiSA report gives a clear sign to the Commission that its approach to protect public services in trade agreements is insufficient. We hope that MEPs will strongly support Viviane Reding’s report next week in Strasbourg.