Services
The international trade in services is big business, comprising between half and three quarters of all economic activity in richer and poorer countries. This is a lucrative market which the world’s transnational corporations want to control. They want services to be treated purely as commodities to be bought and sold in a competitive market.
Services have been described as anything that you cannot drop on your foot, including banks, education, energy, healthcare, water, rubbish collection, libraries, railways, airlines, tourism, TV and radio.
Under the WTO’s GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services), and the services provisions in bilateral and regional free trade agreements, governments agree to open the economy to foreign suppliers of certain services. In those services, foreign suppliers must be given at least as favourable treatment as it gives to local suppliers. Governments cannot set limits on the numbers of service suppliers operating in its market or impose requirements for local content.
Free trade in services threatens to restrict a government’s ability to ensure access to affordable, adequate basic services for all its citizens by removing any restrictions and internal government regulations in the area of service delivery considered to be "barriers to trade". These include measures which pursue environmental, social or community objectives.
Services liberalization provisions of bilateral FTAs often go further than governments’ GATS commitments. For example, while Australia excluded water ‘services’ from its GATS offer, this is included under its FTA with the USA, opening up Australia’s water resources and utilities to US-based TNCs.
last update: May 2012
Articles
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10-Jul-2011 Trade in Services in US FTA with Jordan
The US-JO FTA includes a provision for trade in services in article 3 -
31-May-2011 Services: to liberalize or not?
The Southern Africa Development Community and the Common Market for East and Southern Africa are currently in the process of liberalizing trade in services. -
16-Mar-2009 WDM Taking the credit - how financial services liberalisation fails the poor
The report looks at how financial services liberalisation, and especially the entry and ongoing presence of foreign banks in the global south, as promoted at the World Trade Organisation and through European bilateral trade deals, leads to the prioritisation of richer customers and larger companies resulting in poorer customers losing out. -
12-Mar-2009 EU Observer Brussels pushing finance deregulation in third world
While EU and other global leaders have talked tough about re-regulating the financial sector in the wake of the economic crisis, they remain committed to pushing through banking deregulation in the developing world via trade deals. -
5-Mar-2009 Education outcomes of the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand FTA
Normally the services chapter of an FTA covers movement of persons from one country to another in order to supply a service. This FTA is unusual because it contains both a chapter on trade in services and a separate chapter, and accompanying schedule of commitments, in respect of the movement of natural persons. -
23-Jun-2008 Serving whose interests? The political economy of trade in services agreements
There is a fundamental contradiction between the global market model and the intrinsically social nature of services -
4-Nov-2007 LP Costa Rica: CAFTA threatens to turn water into merchandise
Free trade agreement will make water distribution more unequal for country’s poorest communities. The pact sets the obligation to give a “not less favorable” treatment to US companies, ignoring the deep differences in size and economic power of between these ones and the national sectors. -
27-Sep-2007 Costa Rica: Servicios Públicos en riesgo con el TLC
El Tratado de Libre Comercio con los Estados Unidos, Centroamérica y República Dominicana es mucho más que un simple tratado de libre comercio; es un instrumento que arrastraría al país a un cambio de modelo que terminaría con casi 60 años de desarrollo solidario -
11-Sep-2007 Voices from the South Centre Legal and development implications of inclusion of services in the EPAs
South Centre has issued a policy brief "Why inclusion of services in the EPAs is problematic" which analyses legal and development implications for Eastern and Southern African countries in negotiating trade in services under the EPAs. -
27-Apr-2007 Woolf lobbies Brussels on Asian liberalisation
Law Society president Fiona Woolf is visiting Brussels today to lobby the European Commission on the liberalisation of legal services in Asia. -
15-Mar-2007 Tribune de Genève L’UNESCO donne un coup de frein à la marchandisation de la culture
Les biens et services culturels — cinéma, médias, musique, édition, etc. — sont-ils des marchandises comme des autres, soumises aux libéralisations et règles de l’Organisation mondiale du commerce? La question n’est pas anodine à l’heure où la culture prend des allures de marché planétaire en croissance exponentielle. -
15-Jan-2007 Online Opinion Unbundling water from land
In excluding water from GATS but not from the Australia-US FTA, we have simply swapped one lot of water lords for another. -
11-Oct-2006 WTO Services liberalization in the new generation of Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs): How much further than the GATS?
A comprehensive overview of services liberalization commitments in the new generation of preferential trade agreements as compared to prevailing GATS commitments and Doha Round offers. -
16-Jun-2006 TWN Africa Commentaires sur les services dans les APE
Dans toutes les régions qui ont conclu des ALE avec l’UE, il y a des preuves que le marché des services est restructuré de manière que l’écart entre les pauvres et les riches s’élargit même dans les secteurs sociaux les plus sensibles. -
2-Mar-2006 Upside Down World Private rivers: Will transnational water companies swallow El Salvador’s water supply?
CAFTA creates a new legal framework for the sale of water and other public services, although it allows countries to "opt-out" of the public services of their choosing. El Salvador’s President Tony Saca chose no service exemptions, and thus opened the entire water sector to competition by international corporations. -
16-Jul-2005 Znet Suez strikes back in Bolivia
Bolivia faces an impending lawsuit for cancelling the water contract with Aguas del Illimani, the private consortium controlled by majority shareholder Suez. Thanks to a bilateral investment treaty signed between France and Bolivia, Suez has the right to sue the Bolivian government for breach of contract. -
4-Jun-2005 Costa Rica en el marco del TLC con EEUU: Telecomunicaciones
En un país tan pequeño como el nuestro, un servicio que de por si es un monopolio natural, una apertura del mercado solo lograría trasladar los servicios del monopolio público actual, el Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE), a uno privado, tal y como lo demuestra la experiencia en la mayoría de los países latinoamericanos, pero con un nivel de precios de un 300% o más, por encima de los nuestros. -
9-Feb-2005 Media Trade Monitor Recent FTAs of the US as illustrations of their new strategy for the audiovisual sector
US trade strategy is shifting: USTR may be willing to make concessions to countries that want to require local content or ownership in ’traditional’ AV sector, ie film and radio; however, no such requirements will be allowed in the category of ’electronic commmerce.’ This is because USTR (and MPAA) expect all cultural content (films, television, music) to be transmitted digitally in the near future. -
20-Jan-2005 PSI Divide and conquer: The FTAA, US trade strategy and public services in the Americas
Documents the progress of “competitive liberalization,” a strategy advanced by the United States Trade Representative to establish a network of bilateral international trade agreements as steps toward the multilateral GATS agreement. -
16-Sep-2004 NTEU Australian Bilateral Agreements and Higher Education
Australia is a party to a number of bilateral agreements with developing countries in the East Asian-South Pacific region. The agreements fall into two categories: comprehensive bilateral free trade agreements (BFTAs) and bilateral investment agreements (BIAs). Both types of agreements have implications for higher education, though only BFATs expressly deal with education services.
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Coalition of Service Industries
CSI is the leading US business organization dedicated to the reduction of barriers to US services exports, and to the development of constructive domestic US policies, including tax policies, that enhance the global competitiveness of its members. Website covers bilateral FTAs. -
ESF
The European Services Forum (ESF) is a network of representatives from the European services sector. We are committed to actively promoting the interests of the European services sector and the liberalisation of services markets throughout the world in connection with the GATS negotiations.
