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MEDIA RELEASE International Call for G-20 Action on WTO Financial Deregulation
The organizations – which include labor, environmental, farming, faith, and trade and finance groups – highlighted that the gap between the WTO’s 2001 Doha Round agenda and the 2011 global reality is nowhere more stark than in the WTO’s continuing push for more financial deregulation in the wake of the financial crisis. “We are concerned that important financial reform policies that both G-20 governments and non-G-20 governments seek to implement in order to prevent future crises are already at risk,” the letter says. “Leading trade negotiators, economists, financial experts and trade lawyers have warned that current World Trade Organization provisions covering financial services restrict countries’ use of important financial regulatory measures. This includes some policies promoted by the G-20, such as those to avoid rapid inflows and outflows of capital and those designed to limit the risks derivatives trading can pose to commodity price anomalies and financial stability.” Despite the G-20’s proclaimed mission of restoring financial stability and taking proactive measures to avoid future crises, G-20 communiqués have repeatedly called for a swift conclusion of the WTO Doha Round – despite further financial deregulation being one of the three pillars of the Doha Round. “The Canadian government is in a perfect position to call on G-20 governments to promote the right and ability of countries adopt and maintain policies to safeguard their national financial stability,” says Stuart Trew, trade campaigner with the Council of Canadians, one of several Canadian organizations to endorse the letter. The main aspects of the WTO Doha Round financial deregulation package include a 2006 Collective Request on Financial Services, which demands that all WTO signatories expand their implementation of the WTO’s regulatory constraints; establishment of additional limits on domestic service sector regulation, which is currently under negotiation in a WTO Working Party on Domestic Regulation; and a plan to adopt an outdated set of 1998 Disciplines on Domestic Regulation in the Accountancy Sector, which could restrain governments’ regulatory policies in that sector. “The severe nature of the most recent financial crisis presents a reason and opportunity to reverse the financial deregulation agenda at the WTO, and to strive for more stable, regulated national and international finance rules,” says Tony Clarke, executive director of the Polaris Institute in Ottawa. “Implementing the G-20’s ambitious goals to stabilize the global economy will require changes to existing WTO rules that domestically lock in – and export worldwide – the extreme financial services deregulation agenda that contributed to the global economic crisis,” says Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. “It also will require replacing the 2001 WTO Doha Round financial deregulation agenda with a new approach focused on liberating from the WTO’s constraints the domestic policy space that is needed to re-regulate the runaway financial services industry and stimulate the economy.” The letter urged a series of steps that the G-20 should take, including addressing WTO deregulation in upcoming Communiqués, negotiation of a meaningful WTO safeguard for financial regulation, and suspending elements of Doha Round negotiations that would expand existing financial regulatory limits. Endorsers of the letter from Canada include: The Council of Canadians, Polaris Institute and Global Compliance Research Project. Other signatories include the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas, the Citizens Trade Campaign (USA), Americans for Financial Reform, Public Citizen (USA), the Hemispheric Social Alliance, SOMO (Netherlands), Third World Network-Africa, Brazilian Network for People’s Integration, Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network, Acord International- Africa, SEATINI, War on Want UK, Eurodad, Council of Canadians, Institute for Global Justice (Indonesia), Friends of the Earth (USA), International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development, and IBON Foundation. Read the full letter here. -30- For interviews contact: Bryan Buchanan, Public Citizen (202) 454-5108 The “Our World is not for Sale” (OWINFS) network is a loose grouping of organizations, activists and social movements worldwide fighting the current model of corporate globalization embodied in global trading system. OWINFS is committed to a sustainable, socially just, democratic and accountable multilateral trading system. www.ourworldisnotforsale.org |
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WASHINGTON, D.C. – More than 125 organizations representing 120-plus countries sent a letter to G-20 finance ministers today calling on them to take immediate action to remedy existing World Trade Organization (WTO) financial services rules and those being proposed in the WTO Doha Round that could undermine financial reregulation efforts worldwide.