A loss of Veto in the Commercial Sector on Nice Ratification.

Typedef

Atricle 133 of the Nice Treaty reads

8. Article 133 shall be replaced by the following:
ëArticle 133
1. The common commercial policy shall be based on uniform principles, particularly in regard to
changes in tariff rates, the conclusion of tariff and trade agreements, the achievement of uniformity
in measures of liberalisation, export policy and measures to protect trade such as those to be taken
in the event of dumping or subsidies.
2. The Commission shall submit proposals to the Council for implementing the common
commercial policy.
3. Where agreements with one or more States or international organisations need to be
negotiated, the Commission shall make recommendations to the Council, which shall authorise
the Commission to open the necessary negotiations. The Council and the Commission shall be
responsible for ensuring that the agreements negotiated are compatible with internal Community
policies and rules.
The Commission shall conduct these negotiations in consultation with a special committee
appointed by the Council to assist the Commission in this task and within the framework of
such directives as the Council may issue to it. The Commission shall report regularly to the
special committee on the progress of negotiations.
The relevant provisions of Article 300 shall apply.
4. In exercising the powers conferred upon it by this Article, the Council shall act by a qualified
majority.
5. Paragraphs 1 to 4 shall also apply to the negotiation and conclusion of agreements in the
fields of trade in services and the commercial aspects of intellectual property, insofar as those
agreements are not covered by the said paragraphs and without prejudice to paragraph 6.
By way of derogation from paragraph 4, the Council shall act unanimously when negotiating and
concluding an agreement in one of the fields referred to in the first subparagraph, where that
agreement includes provisions for which unanimity is required for the adoption of internal rules or
where it relates to a field in which the Community has not yet exercised the powers conferred upon
it by this Treaty by adopting internal rules.
The Council shall act unanimously with respect to the negotiation and conclusion of a horizontal
agreement insofar as it also concerns the preceding subparagraph or the second subparagraph of
paragraph 6.
This paragraph shall not affect the right of the Member States to maintain and conclude agreements
with third countries or international organisations insofar as such agreements comply with
Community law and other relevant international agreements.
6. An agreement may not be concluded by the Council if it includes provisions which would go
beyond the Community's internal powers, in particular by leading to harmonisation of the laws or
regulations of the Member States in an area for which this Treaty rules out such harmonisation.
In this regard, by way of derogation from the first subparagraph of paragraph 5, agreements relating
to trade in cultural and audiovisual services, educational services, and social and human health
services, shall fall within the shared competence of the Community and its Member States.
Consequently, in addition to a Community decision taken in accordance with the relevant provisions
of Article 300, the negotiation of such agreements shall require the common accord of the Member
States. Agreements thus negotiated shall be concluded jointly by the Community and the Member
States.
The negotiation and conclusion of international agreements in the field of transport shall continue
to be governed by the provisions of Title V and Article 300.
7. Without prejudice to the first subparagraph of paragraph 6, the Council, acting unanimously
on a proposal from the Commission and after consulting the European Parliament, may extend the
application of paragraphs 1 to 4 to international negotiations and agreements on intellectual
property insofar as they are not covered by paragraph 5.í
EN C 80/16 Official Journal of the European Communities 10.3.2001

To my mind this article seems to take some power away from national governments and annex it towards the EU in the areas of 'audiovisual services, educational services, and social and human health
services'.

According to the World Trade Organisation, it (the WTO) is salivating at the prospect of negotiating on the basis of the entire community with regard to the afore mentioned areas "Of particular significance to the WTO is the exclusive Community competence that would apply to negotiations of agreements that concern services (with certain exceptions), and the commercial aspects of intellectual property rights upon ratification by all Member States of the Treaty of Nice.".

My main objection to this is that once the Council of Ministers has reached agreement on a deal, individual nations do not have the power to veto measures as Qualified Majority Voting will decide the issue.

In two different instances I object to the Article in question and it's implecations, the loss of soveringty is obvious and the lies told to the electorate that the Nice Treaty is simply about 'expansion' when clearly negotiating Trade Agreements in lieu of national governments has nothing to do with Eastwards expansion is the other.

I just thought I'd share that.

seedot

The interplay of international trade law, EU institutions and Irish national authority make this one of the most complex areas of the treaty. I have spent the last month trying to get answers on what the changes to article 133 mean and regardless of the background of the person you talk to, you also get a different answer. This isn't helped by the fact that

1. there is a lack of transparency at each of the levels
2. there is no precedence, especially in GATS disputes
3. what is politically meant and what is legally valid are not the same

Having said this, there are a couple of points on typedefs post.

To my mind this article seems to take some power away from national governments and annex it towards the EU in the areas of 'audiovisual services, educational services, and social and human health

Actually, these are the internationally traded services that are not covered by article 133. They were put there in part at the request of the french (which is why the telly is in there - cultural imperialism and all that). Everything else is up for grabs with an emphasis on water and postal services as these have been identified by the EU for liberalisation.

Even in the areas that are supposedly excluded, nobody has a clear definition - i.e. ancillary services such as cleaning and catering in schools and hospitals do not seem to be excluded. QMV is used to determine if the area is actually covered by the derogation or if the community has primary competence.

Another question that arises - if the commission has been given a mandate to negotiate by the council and then signs a treaty, how does this get ratified - QMV? EU Parliament? Unanimity?

My main objection to this is that once the Council of Ministers has reached agreement on a deal, individual nations do not have the power to veto measures as Qualified Majority Voting will decide the issue.

Actually, it seems that the commission can sign the treaty itself



David Beggs said this to the forum on europe when he described the negotiations (David Beggs Submission ) and Pascal Lamy , the trade commissioner said to the US Chamber of Commerce about the Treaty of Nice, "It is hard to read the new text to understand the legal effect... And on legitimacy: bad news, because the Parliament is excluded (and this) hardly helps us sell trade policy to the European public."

Of course the big question is how will the irish (or other European) publics afect these decisions - say if we wanted to retain government provision of water or maintain some type of regulation on catering in schools? After Nice, it is likely that a treaty will be signed where the irish government will have a commitment to liberalise areas that can only be challenged at the WTO disputes committee - with no democratically elected body reviewing the contents of the treaty before hand.

Even if you believe in full privatisation of public services (who couldn't after the successfull dismantling of the British rail system) the fact that we are told this is about enlargement should set alarm bells ringing.

If you are a conspiracy theorist, you could believe that the Vivendi's and Enrons are perpetrating the biggest scam of all time as they take over huge amounts of resources previously in the public sector.

But of course, for that to happen, politicians would have to be either stupid or corrupt.

Typedef

That is a major point of my post, in that the Irish public is effectively being lied to when it is told the Nice Treaty is all about enlargement, when in reality ammendums to enlargement like Article 133 clearly and unambiguously show that the claim of Nice being soely about enlargement is an outright lie.

I guess it fits into the current administrations propensity to lie through it's teeth at any given plebiscite, I just thought that having investigated Article 133, that of all the claims about Nice being about enlargement this Article is a shining example of how Ireland would cede too much influence to the European Union, and how there would be no accountability if such a ceding were allowed to take place. I believe there are many areas in the Nice Treaty that are nothing to do with enlargement, that are being added into the structure of the European Union under the banner of 'efficient management', but in fact benefit an elite core within the Union and unfortunately for Ireland, it doesn't really seem to be part of this core.

Of course the World Trade Organisation would love to make deals directly with an elite core of European Ministers, and as seedot rightly points out, the structure that would do most of the negotiation would be utterly unaccountable to ordinary Joe Soap in Ireland.

So if the Comission has as seedot claims the ability to sign the Treaty, clearly such an action would be an utter abrogation of Irish soveringty, without question. The Comission is not accountable to the Irish public, it is not elected by it, but if I take what seedot says at face value here, it would seem that the Comission can make huge and influential deals in lieu of Irish elected governance, without even a mandate from the people said Comission is making the deal for.

Is this what 'democracy' is to be in the European Union?

shotamoose

I appreciate the efforts of the two of you to get across what's happening in this area, as it's one which I've long felt to be extremely significant without completely understanding. I still don't completely understand it, for the reasons seedot gives but also because when it comes to the WTO, theory and practise are often unrecognisably different. It's a young organisation and a rather strange one too.

I think it needs to be emphasised that changing Article 133 along the lines of Nice has got serious ramifications not only for EU Members but for every other country we trade with too. The Commission has been extremely agressive in pursuing liberalisation in services, investment, government procurement and competition law through the WTO, despite the constant and vocal opposition of very many developing countries. The latter are no doubt partly motivated by purely protectionist interests at home, but they are also concerned that the proposed measures undermine their efforts to promote national development in the ways that worked succesfully for the now-developed countries and also for many Asian and Latin American countries between the second world war and the mid 1970s.

So while we should be worried that Nice apparently threatens to remove any role for the European or national Parliaments in seriously influencing trade negotiations, we should also be worried that it reduces the ability of Ireland or any other EU member to pursue its own policies vis a vis development in the Third World and to protect these policies from trade interests.