CETA AGREEMENT: WALLONIA MUST STAND FIRM
Mr. Minister, Minister-President of Wallonia,
The Parliament of the Federation Wallonia-Brussels and Wallonia confirmed their rejection of the agreement between Canada and the European Union, the CETA.
We are Proud of it!
We urge you to follow the path opened by the Walloon Parliament and the Parliament of the Federation Wallonia-Brussels. Although Canada is a democratic state with good standards of democracy and protection of citizens, accepting the CETA and its provisional application would be suicidal.
We also urge, by this letter, the members of the associations of the civil society in Flanders, Brussels and everywhere else in Europe to show, to say loud and clear, how they would be happy and proud that their respective parliaments do the same, respecting the voice of countless citizens and civil society who reviewed the file and concluded to its harmfulness and its character quite pernicious and suicidal for our economy, for our public services, for our environmental en social norms and the consumer protection but also for our democracy in our law states.
Suicidal for our economy: no free trade agreement has ever kept its promises, experience shows the contrary. Indeed they strengthen wage and social inequalities, deconstruct territories, increased underemployment and insecurity, destroy the peasant agriculture and are “climaticide” for all of us. A recent study led by TUFTS University shows that jobs could be lost in Europe due to this agreement only.
Suicidal for our public services: indeed it is a liberalized agreement, a broad and deep agreement that will necessarily submit the public services to market logic, and dispossess our governments and communities of their ability to work for social and territorial cohesion.
Suicidal for the social, environmental and sanitary standards, because the planned regulatory cooperation mechanism will lead their race to the bottom and that the precautionary principle is absolutely NOT guaranteed in this agreement. The soothing declarations of the Commission and some governments are unfortunately not changing anything. Even the interpretative statement proposed at the last minute by the Commission and Canada has no legal value and no practical significance.
This kind of agreement is causing the undermining and the death of democracy by taking away the capability “to make the law” from the regional and national parliaments and the European Parliament. The situation is extremely serious: the “new” arbitration mechanism which the Commission claims it represents a major reform, is only a disguised arbitration with already devastating effects everywhere. Furthermore, due to new state regulations causing the companies a fall in their profits, they will be able to attack the states and obtain ridiculous compensation from the states – all of this is decided by “adjudicator” commonly practicing conflict of interest. We have said over and over: these treaties are not “free trade” projects with Canada or the US (This trade is already free), these are agreements to give multinational a wide access to the choices of the parliaments, and this way oligarchies and international monopolies can promote private governance systems instead of democratically elected governments.
For ALL these reasons, it would be incomprehensible to accept the provisional application. Whatever the rhetorical devices they try to give it, the application of a widely controversial text in front of a parliamentary debate both on European and national level, and also the worries this text creates about the impacts on national competences, is not acceptable and cannot be accepted by a politician concerned with democracy.
The Walloon Parliament defends a courageous position. It rejects the sellout of democracy: this is the position a whole section of the civil society is calling for across Europe. Please accept, Mr Minister President, all our respect for the position you defend so passionately that honor you in the eyes of the European citizens.
Mr. Minister, Minister-President of Wallonia, Wallonia must stand firm. If the European Commission continues its ultraliberal policy of austerity against the opinion of citizens, other European countries will leave the European Union.
We hope, however, that other countries will follow your path.
Besides the selfish interests of member states of the European Union, other real gravediggers of democratic and social European construction are the private interests of multinationals and banks, which are supported by politicians following their orders.