Some background and analytical notes on a leaked EU discussion paper on trade and investment On 27 January 1999, a number of NGO representatives were invited by Directorate General 1 of the European Commission (External Relations: Commercial Policy and Relations with North America, the Far East, Australia and New Zealand) for a dialogue meeting on environment and investment issues in relation to the proposed new round of WTO negotiations.
[For your information: the EU Commission considers business interest groups like UNICE (the European Federation of Employers' Organizations) or CEFIC (the branch organization of chemical industry in the EU) to be 'NGOs'. Therefore, roughly half of the NGO participants at the dialogue meeting were industry representatives; the other half belonged to citizens organizations.]
Less than a week in advance of the meeting, the Commission faxed me a discussion paper on investment, prepared by DG1. I have converted this fax into ASCII-text and spread it through e-mail to NGOs involved in the issue and some broader e-mail lists (e.g. flora.mai-not).
This public discussion paper differs significantly from the leaked paper although it has the same origin code (I/M/2). All controversial sections have been cut out, and some propaganda on the potential benefits of FDI for developing countries has been added.
When during the dialogue meeting on 27 January, Mr. Robert Madelin (head of directorate M of DG1) and Mr. Rafaele Petriccione (head of the Investment Unit of DG1, which falls under directorate M) were asked to comment upon the status of both the public discussion paper and the leaked text, they stated that the leaked text was outdated. We should believe that only the public discussion document adequately reflects the current state of thinking in the Commission.
However, when comparing both texts one cannot suppress a strong feeling of distrust. I therefore strongly recommend you to compare both documents. I have marked the differences between both documents in red.
Apart from learning about the secret agenda of the EU, these documents will also teach you about the subtle art of cut and paste. Mark the lettering of the headings in the public discussion text, which runs A-B-C-D-G. Not so strange when you know the 'original', where chapter headings run from A to G...
My personal favorites are the replacement of market opening rules" (leaked document) by more sophisticated rules" in the public document or the omission of a bracketed explanation from the leaked document in the public one: scepticism in some quarters (notably the US)".
But it is also enlightening to see how observations which are attributed to the Business sector in the leaked 113-document have become general truth in the public discussion document, e.g. in:
"[according to the Business sector's experience], the Community should continue to pursue an improvement of investment protection in the WTO forum, including with regard to developed countries."
In the leaked document the Commission even explains the seemingly quite substantial influence of business interest groups on its paper:
"The European Business community has made clear its position in favour of multilateral rules on investment both through its representative bodies (UNICE, ERT) and through informal direct contacts with investment decision-makers."
This note was written by Erik Wesselius (Corporate Europe Observatory)
This page was installed on 8 February 1999