Trade in Services Agreement
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The Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) was a proposed international
trade treaty A trade agreement (also known as trade pact) is a wide-ranging taxes, tariff and trade treaty that often includes investment guarantees. It exists when two or more countries agree on terms that help them trade with each other. The most common t ...
between 23 Parties, including the
European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...
,
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
and the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
. The agreement aimed at liberalizing the worldwide trade of services such as
banking A bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital markets. Because ...
,
healthcare Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health profe ...
, and
transport Transport (in British English), or transportation (in American English), is the intentional movement of humans, animals, and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, land (rail and road), water, cable, pipeline, an ...
. Criticism about the secrecy of the agreement arose in June 2014, after
WikiLeaks WikiLeaks () is an international Nonprofit organization, non-profit organisation that published news leaks and classified media provided by anonymous Source (journalism), sources. Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activism, Internet acti ...
released a classified draft of the proposal's financial services annex, dated the previous April. Another release took place in June 2015, and another took place in May 2016. As of 2021, no such agreement has ever been reached.


Origin

The process was proposed to a group of countries meeting in
Geneva Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaki ...
called the
Really Good Friends The so-called Really Good Friends (RGF) club is a sub-group of members of the World Trade Organization formed in 2012 to discuss the possibility of a services liberalization agreement. Most members of the 'Really Good Friends' group are top global ...
. All negotiating meetings take place in Geneva. The EU and the US are the main proponents of the agreement and the authors of most joint changes. The participating countries started crafting the proposed agreement in February 2012 and presented initial offers at the end of 2013.


Proposed agreement

The agreement covers about 70% of the global services economy. Some claim that the aim of TISA is the privatization of worldwide trade in services in areas such as banking, healthcare, and transport. Services comprise 75% of American economic output. In EU states, services comprise almost 75% of its employment and
gross domestic product Gross domestic product (GDP) is a money, monetary Measurement in economics, measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced and sold (not resold) in a specific time period by countries. Due to its complex and subjec ...
. For commitments on what the
European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body o ...
calls "'national treatment' (i.e. on equal treatment for foreign and local suppliers)", excluding commitments on market access, the following applies: Once a particular trade barrier has unilaterally been removed in an area where the country has made a commitment, it cannot be reintroduced. This proposal is known as the "ratchet clause".


European Union

The EU claims its trade agreements do not prevent governments at any level from providing services in areas such as water, education, healthcare, and social services. The EU has stated that companies outside its borders will not be allowed to provide ''publicly funded'' healthcare or social services. The EU has made its position papers, offers, and negotiation reports available online.
Market access In international trade, market access is a company's ability to enter a foreign market by selling its goods and services in another country. Market access is not the same as free trade, because market access is normally subject to conditions or req ...
for publicly funded health, social services and education, water services, film, or TV will not be taken. Therefore, the "ratchet clause" will not apply.


Parties involved

Initially having 16 members, the TISA has expanded to include 23 parties. Since the European Union represents 28 member states, there are 50 countries represented. The number of countries represented in each continent are: 32 in
Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
, 7 in
Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an area ...
, 5 in
North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
, 3 in
South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...
, 2 in
Oceania Oceania (, , ) is a region, geographical region that includes Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Spanning the Eastern Hemisphere, Eastern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres, Oceania is estimated to have a land area of ...
, and 1 in
Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
. The 23 TiSA parties in order of their income categories are:


Controversy

The agreement has been criticized for the secrecy around the negotiation. The cover page of the negotiating document leaked by Wikileaks says: "Declassify on: Five years from entry into force of the TISA agreement or, if no agreement enters into force, five years from the close of the negotiations." Because of this practice, it is not possible to be informed about the liberalizing rules that the participating countries propose for the future agreement. Only Switzerland has a practice of making public on the Internet all the proposals it submitted to the other parties since June 2012. The European Union published its "offer" for TISA only in July 2014 after the Wikileaks disclosure.
Digital rights Digital rights are those human rights and legal rights that allow individuals to access, use, create, and publish digital media or to access and use computers, other electronic devices, and telecommunications networks. The concept is particular ...
advocates have also brought attention to the fact that the agreement has provisions which would significantly weaken existing
data protection Information privacy is the relationship between the collection and dissemination of data, technology, the public expectation of privacy, contextual information norms, and the legal and political issues surrounding them. It is also known as data pr ...
provisions in signatory countries. In particular, the agreement would strip existing protections which aim to keep confidential or personally identifiable data within country borders or which prohibit its movement to other countries which do not have similar data protection laws in place.


Leaked contents

WikiLeaks WikiLeaks () is an international Nonprofit organization, non-profit organisation that published news leaks and classified media provided by anonymous Source (journalism), sources. Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activism, Internet acti ...
released a classified draft of the proposal's financial services annex in June 2014, dated the previous April. Another release took place in June 2015 and in May 2016.


Software source disclosure mandate ban

The agreement bans government mandates that require disclosure of software
source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...
as a condition for the distribution of that software and services related to it, stating "No Party may require the transfer of, or access to, source code of software owned by a person of another Party, as a condition of providing services related to such software in its territory." While there are exemptions for "software used for critical infrastructure" and non-mass-market software, the agreement would, for example, prevent governments from forcing suppliers of consumer
network routers A router is a networking device that forwards data packets between computer networks. Routers perform the traffic directing functions between networks and on the global Internet. Data sent through a network, such as a web page or email, is ...
to supply the source code for the software for security purposes.


Criticism

A preliminary analysis of the ''Financial Services Annex'' by prominent free trade critic Professor
Jane Kelsey Jane Kelsey at Rhodes Forum 2014 Elizabeth Jane Kelsey is a New Zealand academic and activist who has promoted critical examination of the relationship between social, political and economic issues and how these can impact on human rights and ju ...
, Faculty of Law,
University of Auckland , mottoeng = By natural ability and hard work , established = 1883; years ago , endowment = NZD $293 million (31 December 2021) , budget = NZD $1.281 billion (31 December 2021) , chancellor = Cecilia Tarrant , vice_chancellor = Dawn F ...
,
New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
was published with the WikiLeaks release. The
Public Services International Public Services International (PSI) is the global union federation for workers in public services, including those who work in social services, health care, municipal services, central government and public utilities. , PSI has 700 affiliated ...
(PSI) organization described TISA as:
a treaty that would further liberalize trade and investment in services, and expand "regulatory disciplines" on all services sectors, including many public services. The "disciplines," or treaty rules, would provide all foreign providers access to domestic markets at "no less favorable" conditions as domestic suppliers and would restrict governments' ability to regulate, purchase and provide services. This would essentially change the regulation of many public and privatized or commercial services from serving the public interest to serving the profit interests of private, foreign corporations.
One concern is the provisions regarding retention of business records.
David Cay Johnston David Cay Boyle Johnston (born December 24, 1948) is an American investigative journalist and author, a specialist in economics and tax issues, and winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting. From July 2011 until September 2012 he was a ...
said, "It is ... hard to make the case that the cost of keeping a duplicate record at the home office in a different country is a burden." He noted that business records requirements are sufficiently important that they were codified in law even before the
Code of Hammurabi The Code of Hammurabi is a Babylonian legal text composed 1755–1750 BC. It is the longest, best-organised, and best-preserved legal text from the ancient Near East. It is written in the Old Babylonian dialect of Akkadian, purportedly by Hamm ...
. Impacts of the law may include "whether people can get loans or buy insurance and at what prices as well as what jobs may be available." Dr. Patricia Ranald, a research associate at the
University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's si ...
, said:
“Amendments from the US are seeking to end publicly provided services like public pension funds, which are referred to as 'monopolies' and to limit public regulation of all financial services ... They want to freeze financial regulation at existing levels, which would mean that governments could not respond to new developments like another global financial crisis."
Regarding the secrecy of the draft, Professor Kelsey commented: "The secrecy of negotiating documents exceeds even the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) and runs counter to moves in the WTO towards greater openness." Johnston adds, "It is impossible to obey a law or know how it affects you when the law is secret." Canadian activist and politician
Maude Barlow Maude Victoria Barlow (born May 24, 1947) is a Canadian author and activist. She is a founding member of the Council of Canadians, a citizens' advocacy organization with members and chapters across Canada. She is also the co-founder of the Blue ...
argued the TISA didn't protect semi-public services funded by private subjects and by the public authority. She opposed an agreement that "will make it impossible for governments to reverse privatization or decrease the influence of the private sector. Governments will only be able to choose to maintain privatized services as they are or to extend liberalization." For profit corporations were enabled to sue a supranational judicial system so as to avoid the domestic courts.


See also

* European Services Forum – lobby * *
Trans Pacific Partnership The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), or Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, was a highly contested proposed trade agreement between 12 Pacific Rim economies, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singa ...
(TPP) * Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) *
Transatlantic Free Trade Area A Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) is a proposal to create a free-trade agreement covering Europe and North America, on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Such proposals have been made since the 1990s. Between 2013 and about 2017 an agree ...
(TAFTA) *
Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) is a free-trade agreement between Canada and the European Union and its member states. It has been provisionally applied, thus removing 98% of the preexisting tariffs between the two parts. ...
(CETA)


References


External links


June, July and December 2015 documents release by WikileaksApril 2014 Draft document release by WikileaksFebruary 2015 leak
* ttps://www.reuters.com/article/usa-trade-services-idUSL2N0OY0M020140618 U.S. says basic outline in place for int'l services trade dealbr>Team TISA, advocating for TISA

In focus: Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) – European CommissionTISA: Yet Another Leaked Treaty You've Never Heard Of Makes Secret Rules for the Internet – Electronic Frontier Foundation
{{Free trade agreements of the United States Commercial treaties International factor movements Proposed treaties Classified documents