MEDIA RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 13 , 2003

Major Deception Underway on the Services Front:
Closed-door negotiations on Singapore Issues likely conducted through GATS

CANCUN, MEXICO – “Services are not an issue at Cancun,” insisted trade officials from the European Union, Canada and the United States in the weeks preceding the fifth WTO Ministerial conference.

Was this assertion (proved blatantly false by the text of Paragraph 6 related to services in the draft ministerial declaration) an elaborate deception hiding a more serious agenda?

Could it be that the Quad planned for the transfer of the negotiations of the Singapore issues to the GATS table if talks on these new issues proved impossible to launch?

According to various sources, services are the single greatest hidden agenda in Cancun: • A recent press release from the International Chamber of Commerce recommended that negotiations should move from subjects lacking consensus to services negotiations through the GATS; • Not only does Paragraph 6 of the ministerial draft state that no service sector is off the table, it actually reaffirms the member countries’ commitment to launch negotiations on government procurement as well as on subsidies. • Internal sources indicate that the European Union’s ‘133 Committee’ is considering such a strategic shift.

While the agricultural talks are stalled and as 70 countries firmly refuse to launch negotiations on the Singapore issues, the catch-all agreement known as GATS looks to be the likely channel where dominating countries will attempt to fulfill their agenda.

The GATS’ overwhelming complexity allows for the possibility to literally and discreetly graft three of these new issues:

• Investment: “With Mode 3, we already have an MAI in the services sector” (Lamy)
• Government procurement, since GATS’ article 13, constitutes in itself a potential agreement on procurement;
• Worse, Paragraph 6 of the Draft Ministerial Declaration suggests that member countries seek “to intensify efforts to conclude negotiations on rule-making under GATS Articles VI:4…”

To deceive civil society and trade delegates from the Southern Hemisphere, the strategy had to stay unnoticed. However, in the hallways of the Convention Centre as in the streets of Cancun, deception is now a lot more difficult to achieve.

There will be no more ‘blank check at WTO meetings.

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