I am deeply ashamed that Mogens Jensen, the social-democratic Danish Minister for Trade and Development Cooperation, is among the signatories to this letter urging the European Commission to include the so-called ISDS mechanism in the EU/US trade agreement (TTIP) currently being negotiated. It bears repeating just how pernicious the so-called investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) really is. Essentially, if the ISDS is included in the treaty, then multinational corporations will be able to sue national governments for lost profits - in cases, for example, where a government decides to impose stricter regulation or decides to change its political priorities (e.g. transition to green energy) - in for-profit supranational panels composed of corporate lawyers not subject to any kind of judicial review or public accountability. The concept that we usually use to describe such subjection of whole societies to the arbitrary judgment of a few individuals is tyranny, and the fact that supposedly democratic communities are actively pushing for this obvious attack on their own sovereignty speaks volumes about the true allegiances or immense naïveté of even some nominally progressive politicians. Given that the Danish left-wing suffered a veritable melt-down over a partial sale of the state energy provider Dong Energy to Goldman Sachs (a one-off move that was largely of symbolic significance), it is unbelievable that the Danish governments support of this covert and profoundly undemocratic piece of supranational institutional reform, with far-reaching negative consequences for the ability of European governments to pursue progressive politics, is not attracting more heat. For more on the TTIP and the ISDS, see: blog.oup/2014/01/van-harten-q-a-investor-state-arbitration/ and monbiot/2014/11/04/a-gunpowder-plot-against-democracy/
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 10:11:30 +0000
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