What is TISA?

Right question. In the midst of the International Treaty campaign, the best known are TTIP and CETA, and TISA is a more sectoral agreement, the Agreement on Trade in Services. They are trying to regulate or deregulate everything related to the sale of services. The negotiations, which take place in Geneva between 9 and 13 February, will take place in the eleventh round, with the participation of the European Commission and 22 states, including the United States. In total, 50 countries around the world have signed agreements.

Is there no longer an extensive service negotiation in the World Trade Organisation (WTO)?

Yes, to the General Trade and Services Agreement. But he doesn't move as fast as some elites would want. In particular, I refer to those who want to regulate trade in services, including public services, which is what has driven TISA. These elites are carrying out a process of accumulation through all these treaties, with TISA being the darkest. It's costing us to look at it.

This concealment is particularly serious in view of the fact that negotiations are under way on things that directly affect us all.

That's right. On the one hand, they are negotiating with the public services (education, health, water, waste management...) and on the other hand with the other services (professionals, workforce that one company provides to another...). The European Union has a great interest in being, together with the United States, the world’s largest export service. But many countries in the world have a lot to lose with the entry into force of TISA, because they have little chance of offering services, they only receive and pay. This is one of the fundamental debates in the WTO on whether the EU and the US are. United States They don't act in part as invaders when they offer their services. That is why both sides are very passionate about the agreement.

And that is why most of the countries participating in TISA are from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)?

Almost everyone is a member of the OECD. The idea of TISA is to start a negotiation less than the internal of the MMA, something alternative in some way, including all those who are not going to oppose it, and once an agreement has been reached try to expand it, until it is imposed within the MMA.

Specifically, what are they negotiating in TISA? What is on the table?

The EU itself says that air transport and services that can only be provided by states, i.e. justice, public order – ultimately the police – and defence, in principle all services can enter into negotiations. However, each Member State has the possibility of establishing its own negative list, i.e. the list of services that it wants to exclude from the agreement. The problem with the negative lists is that once given you can't change anything. Furthermore, any kind of service that might arise from that – from technological progress, let us say – would automatically be affected by the agreement and become negotiable.

Can you give examples?

Fifteen years ago the Internet was very small and e-commerce had not developed. Imagine what would have happened if the TISA had been negotiated then. What would you do in the future? Who knows? The developments that are currently taking place, which are not yet known to the public, will remain in the shadow of TISA, including those that may affect our well-being.

What does TISA provide us in general? Are we talking about liberalising public health, for example?

It's about to see where they're going. This autumn the European Parliament must officially clarify its position on TISA and the parliamentary body preparing the report, former Commissioner for Justice of the European Commission Viviane Reding, said that red lines will have to be set which TISA could not tread in any way. It's curious that it includes people's movements; that capitals move freely, but people don't. For his part, Reding said that TISA should include China, which is where the plane is located. It should be borne in mind that at all times there is no BRICS (all of the five major developing countries) in the negotiations; those in TISA also want to attract those countries, and China, besides being one of the most important countries from a commercial point of view, is a tractor of all BRICS. [China has already expressed its desire to participate in the agreement].

Europe is often regarded as the last strength of the welfare state. How would TISA be affected?

By making an almost ideological reflection, we could say that we are talking about the last bastion that capital wants to absorb. Now that we talk so much about the debt of states, it seems that international capital, the so-called markets, is preparing for a lowering of interest rates or for some of the debt not to be paid. What are you doing in the meantime? Accumulation of assets, including the taking over of a relevant part of public services, in order to derive benefits. As this process intensifies, it would become the last imprint of the welfare state. In fact, many of the services have already been privatised and, by the way, the consequence has been unbeatable.

It has been so bad (tariff increases, deterioration of service…) that we have also seen processes of setback: to make the privatized public again.

Yes, but one of the objectives of TISA is that privatisations should not be reversed. To this end, the pact will have the mechanism in English called ratchet clause, which could be translated as a “carraca clause”, that is, once a regulation has been agreed, this service could not be re-regulated. It would be a definitive consolidation. However, the European Commission says that this clause will not affect the quality of the service provided by the service.

And do the groups that oppose the agreement believe it?

In recent times, every time a document is filmed or made public without further ado, it is seen that the things that have been said before have nothing to do with reality. The other day, Ignacio García-Bercero, head of the EU delegation to the TTIP negotiations, asked about the fracking and replied that the fracking would be out of the pact, surely we will not soon see the prospects, etc. The credibility of the Commission is shaken.

Also with regard to the Karraka clause?

Look, in an EU-published TISA manual it says: “The Karraka clause will not affect the ability of each party to regulate it without any discrimination. States shall maintain the freedom to establish social standards, such as minimum wage, security, quality or the environment, which apply equally to domestic and foreign service providers and which do not limit the number of companies that may offer services.” This text sets out the two main keys to TISA: it is a question of foreign and domestic companies in the same way, and it is not possible to establish any conditions that could hinder access to the market for any company. These are two of the most important clauses in the process, which leave everything open.

A Status quo clause is also provided for in TISA. What is it?

The same thing as the word indicates: that the situation does not change. In other words, service undertakings are not in a position to change the conditions under which they are operating. Europe’s position must be understood: we are the biggest exporters of services. For example, the plans that the Basque Government has maintained in recent years in relation to the economic model allow us to see that they take into account the service-based economy. The world must therefore become wider, liberalised in order to be able to leave. It's us salespeople. That's right, setting limits to human trafficking.

In December last year, at the conference organised by GUE/NGL in Brussels, more than one commented that the negotiation of the TTIP is slow, that it is difficult for both parties to reach an agreement. Does the same apply to TISA?

No, TISA is going faster, because the interests have come together, and the opponents do not yet have the capacity to mobilise to influence the negotiations. And the lack of information is greater than in the case of TTIP. We should pay more attention to TISA, which is negotiating completely involuntarily; we accuse the TTIP that it will lead to a deterioration in the welfare state, but surely TISA will have a much greater impact in this area.

But this deterioration is earlier. You yourself stated in Brussels that, at least, since the countries of the European Union signed the Lisbon Treaty in 2007.

That's right. It is said that the evolution of recent years has prevented us from sovereignty, and that these treaties will prevent us further. That is obvious, but it must be borne in mind that we lost much of that sovereignty in Lisbon. For example, the fact that the Commission is responsible for negotiating trade and investment treaties hides the sovereignty of states. The same applies to monetary policy. It is now managed by the European Central Bank, to the detriment of the banks of the Member States. The Stability Pact signed after the Lisbon Pact enabled the Member States to attribute almost all economic policy competences to the Commission. And who is the Commission? That's the big question. Although the European Parliament has maintained its veto capacity, the most important decisions are taken by the European Commission and the Council of Europe. The neoliberal model has been reinforced by them. And the European Union is becoming less and less Europe; one of the criticisms being made of these major agreements is that it is a clear setback to the idea of the EU, which is leaving a fundamental part of its decision-making capacity to transnational corporations. These major agreements are putting an end to the very high idea of Europeanism.