While the French media ‘feasted’ on President Hollande’s state dinner at the White House, an interesting narrative has emerged centered on negotiations for the Transatlantic Free Trade area – aka/the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Here is the crux of the issue: will this agreement, when and if signed and enacted, emasculate civil society by operating above the people’s elected representatives and institutions designed to protect them – for the benefit of the world’s largest, wealthiest and most well-connected corporations?
First, for L’Humanite, in an article headlined With Obama, Hollande Plots ‘Economic War’ on Behalf of Multinationals, French member of the European Parliament Patrick Le Hyaric, commenting on President Hollande’s state visit to the United States, writes that the agreement, largely written by the very multinational corporations it is supposed to police, and with special tribunals created under the treaty, will supersede national laws designed to protect citizens from the predations of the market. He writes in part:
“Under the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, any multinational corporation that considers our laws an impediment to its capacity to exploit people and nature at its discretion would be given the opportunity to sue states before special tribunals designed by and for multinationals. Thus, neither parliaments nor governments would decide on laws. Multinational corporations would create their own rights. This is a program for a dictatorship at the beck and call of the powers of industry and finance, and without the need for booted and helmeted generals.”
Then, for France’s Mediapart, in an article headlined Hollande in America: Multinational Lobbyist Tool, columnist Jean-Luc Gasnier lambastes President François Hollande as a toady of Uncle Sam and big business, and for turning his back on the ideals that brought him into politics in the first place by advocating a trade deal negotiated in secret between the U.S. and Europe. According to Gasnier, the agreement would undermine the people’s elected representatives and the institutions that are designed to protect them – with rules written by and for none other than the largest companies in the world:
“Globalization and its accompanying multilateral free-trade agreements gnaw away, a little more every day, at the democratic foundations of societies. Elected institutions are bypassed when they aren’t outright violated by ad hoc agreements that establish their own rules of operation. … We must resign ourselves to admit that, ultimately, Hollande likes the U.S. for everything that makes it so unpopular among anti-globalists. Hollande has sided with Uncle Sam, that caricature of American imperialism and big business, wearing his top hat and with a cigar in his mouth.”
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