How does TTIP affect your health? A public warning
Edmund Stubbs, 20 November 2014
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is worrying. The opacity of its procedures and unequal representation in its pre-negotiation stages (520 meetings with business lobbyists as compared with only 26 with public interests groups) has led to concerns regarding possible weakened European product safety standards, reduced environmental protection laws, and job losses.
Proponents emphasise that the TTIP would promote economic growth and subsequent employment for millions, helping “the West” to compete with emerging economies such as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China & South Africa).
However, as presently proposed, the TTIP may include an Investor-to-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) clause designed to protect overseas investors from “unfair treatment”. This would potentially allow “investors” to seek legal redress against any government policy that it deems to affect them detrimentally. Bypassing the possible general anti-democratic implications of this clause, I shall focus on those threatening public health.
There has already been much media attention regarding “healthcare corporations” potentially taking governments before ISDS adjudication panels if they seek to exclude them from the provision of services. Such action would appear to restrict governmental freedom with regard to health policy formulation.
Fortunately, it seems likely that TTIP negotiations will take this issue into account; inserting strong counter-clauses to protect some public services from this threat.
That “people only seek medical care once they are ill” seems obvious, however preventative public health measures are only now, after much delay being implemented more frequently by health policy makers and professionals. These measures help to counteract the “bad lifestyle” causes of much 21st century disease but could prove extremely bad news for some corporations.
In 2011, tobacco giant Philip Morris International (PMI) initiated an ongoing ISDS compensation claim against the Australian government for legislating the plain packaging of cigarettes. This action led Australia’s neighbour, New Zealand, to abandon the introduction of a similar policy. PMI has also taken legal action against Uruguay (a country with a GDP smaller than PMI’s annual revenues) for increasing the size of health warnings on cigarette packets.
The threat is obvious, European governments could, for example, risk the award of billions in compensation to fast food chains each time certain ingredients were prohibited or “sales damaging” measures, such as that of calorie content labelling were introduced.
Our NHS, we are told, is already on the “brink of collapse”, we need to nip common diseases such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes in the bud, thus saving on expensive later treatment; we also want people to live healthier, happier lives. Thus we need to protect preventative healthcare measures, within the clauses of the TTIP, from any threat from commercial organisations; something much more complex than simply protecting healthcare services.
Edmund Stubbs, Healthcare Researcher, Civitas