Archive - Jun 2015 - Article

The Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) is becoming an issue for many people in Europe. Negotiated in secret in Geneva for almost two years by over 50 countries, including the European Union, USA, Japan, Canada, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Australia and South Korea, it has taken months of work from global researchers and a spectacular leak from Julian Assange’s Wikileaks to expose anything about its contents.

Press coverage across the world around Wkileaks expose of TISA negotiation texts, largely expressed concern over the impact of secret trade negotiations. However, Edward Alden's "WikiLeaks and Trade: A Healthy Dose of Sunshine," posted at the Council on Foreign Relations, stands out like a sore thumb among the other analysis. This response underlines that Alden's cursory "reading" of the texts exhibits a lack of understanding of the complexity of trade in services rules.

Members of the World Trade Organization remained sharply polarized Monday over the "five approaches" put forward by the Chair of the negotiating group for further talks to finalize outcomes in market access on industrial products in the post-Bali work programme for concluding the Doha Round.

The growing disquiet and discontent among the large majority of developing countries over the non-transparent manner in which talks over the post-Bali work programme are taking place at the WTO surfaced Monday at an informal meeting of the Negotiating Group on Market Access for Non-Agricultural Products (NAMA), as also at an informal Heads of Delegation (HOD) meeting in the afternoon.

Today, as Ministers meet to further a controversial and little known proposed Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) on the sidelines of the annual Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) meeting, Wikileaks released (wikileaks.org/tisa/) a trove of negotiating texts, including annexes covering a wide range of issues on domestic regulation, financial services, air and maritime transportation, electronic commerce, transparency, telecommunications, professional services, and the natural movement of persons (called “Mode4” in trade agreements.)