General Agreement on Trade in Services

The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) at the WTO is seen as the next MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investment, that was successfully derailed by enormous protest at the impacts it would have on people's lives).

Its goal is to basically further liberalize services in the public domain. While private businesses providing public services can have its merits, the concerns with something like GATS has been along the lines of concentrated ownership, foreign ownership by large transnationals and rules limiting or affecting the ability of national governments to appropriately hold companies providing these services sufficiently accountable. On a broad range of "services" this therefore has a wider impact than many other (often also undemocratic) international trade and investment agreements.

Transnational corporations [TNCs] and their strong business lobby groups have helped make the US and European Union (EU) push the GATS hard to developing countries.

If given the go ahead, it too would be seen to have a "devastating effects on the ability of governments to meet the needs of the poorest and most powerless of their citizens" according to the World Development Movement's report, titled In whose service?. The report goes on to show that there are concerns on a number of fronts including the following:

1. GATS covers basic services like water, health and education. These are basic necessities –- not things that can be left to the market. It should be the duty of governments to ensure that even the poorest have access to such services, whether or not they can afford to pay. Yet, water supply in developing countries appears to be a major target for European companies in the current negotiations.
2. GATS rules are not just limited to the cross-border trade in services. They also prevent some forms of government regulation of foreign investors, that is, of multinational companies setting up shop in their country. The GATS therefore extends beyond other trade agreements, preventing governments from following their own national development strategies and ensuring that local people actually benefit from the presence of multinational corporations.
3. Commitments made by governments under GATS are effectively irreversible. The privatisation and deregulation of service provision is highly controversial, yet governments are not only signing away their own right to regulate – but the right of future generations to implement different policies.

Negotiations started March 2001, with a view to get an agreement by the end of 2002.