from Hacker News

WikiLeaks releases Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) documents

by styx31 on 5/25/16, 12:25 PM with 18 comments

  • by 5ersi on 5/25/16, 2:39 PM

    As a citizen of an EU state, I'd say that the whole TISA thing looks like the rules that EU imposes on the EU member-states: non-discrimination against other member-state entities and limitations and/or requirements for local regulations. Also another similarity: there is almost zero-to-none chance for a member state to get out of EU - the cost would be just too big. Once TISA is signed it will be very hard to get out.

    As our brief EU history has taught us: mostly the rules are good. But when they are not, there needs to be a way to amend them. The problem with TISA seems to be that once signed it puts most of the decision-making process into hands of people that were not elected by the people.

  • by styx31 on 5/25/16, 12:49 PM

  • by projectramo on 5/25/16, 1:39 PM

    This is when I appreciate journalists who read through all these documents and summarize the important parts, and analyze the interesting implications for me.

  • by nashashmi on 5/25/16, 2:02 PM

    So corporations are owning, influencing, and dictating a greater portion of our world? Without the knowledge of the governed? The worse part is that corporations are trying to "domesticate" parts of the world where they do not reside simply for an isolated goal of profitability.

    I normally like trade partnerships because it spreads a common set of laws for companies to operate within across regions, but I do not like it when the end goal is provincial in nature.

  • by 5ersi on 5/25/16, 2:15 PM

    A chapter on SOE (State Owned Enterprises) seems mainly targeted at China and other state-controlled economies. It basically prevents SOEs to discriminate against other entities (private owned and/or foreign) when buying/selling products/services.

    In western world SOEs do majority of business via tenders, where they are already prohibited to discriminates based on non-business related reasons.

    See "A snapshot of the TISA annex": https://wikileaks.org/tisa/Annex-on-State-Owned-Enterprises/...

    In all honesty, it does not look like a doomsday scenario.

  • by slizard on 5/25/16, 1:20 PM

    I'm glad this came out. Now there should be more concrete information to use in lobbying against these nasty deals WIP.

  • by grownseed on 5/25/16, 7:13 PM

    From the Liberation article [0] (which has a strong French bias):

    - France has stopped further negotiations with the US regarding TTIP as the US do not seem to be willing to give enough in return

    - TISA has now been leaked, although discussions started in March, 2013

    - the official aim of TISA is to reduce barriers to competition in the name of growth and employment, by supposedly treating local and international operators the same

    - the implicit aim of TISA would be to counter China's economic threat on the international scene

    - supporters of TISA (once accepted) would supposedly force members of the World Trade Organisation to adopt the agreement, yet China, Brasil, Russia and India are all members of the WTO

    - some recent amendments to TISA ask for less regulations from member states to remove some of the constraints encountered by foreign actors, this would have a substantial impact on industries such as mining, energy, large infrastructures, IT, etc.

    - other amendments ask for foreign companies to not be required to have a local branch in in member states where they do business, which may override/impede on national rights

    - TISA would require state-owned enterprises to behave as private actors in foreign countries and prevent them from favouring local business (local or national suppliers and clients)

    - the above point also suggests that if a member country's public companies represent more than 30% of its economy, other countries can ask other members of the agreement to refuse to support said country through non-commercial means (e.g. cancellation of debts, donations, preferential loan, etc.). This is ostensibly a way to impede on the competitive advantage of countries like China which have strong government support

    - TISA would aim to globalize and commodify health services to open the market to health corporations and insurance companies in countries where healthcare is provided by the state or welfare organisations [1]

    - TISA aims to establish procedures for the confidential exchange of documents on a need-to-know basis (up to four years after the agreement goes through). While the exchange of documents may be confidential, participating members would be allowed to transfer the documents on non-secure channels and keep them on systems that are not subject to special security measures

    - the agreement is criticized for aggressively supporting business and competition, while ignoring the "public service" aspect of the agreement

    I may have skipped some things but I think that about covers it.

    [0] http://www.liberation.fr/planete/2016/05/25/de-nouveaux-docu...

    [1] The actual details come from https://data.awp.is/international/2015/02/04/22.html

  • by d1str0 on 5/25/16, 4:20 PM

    I feel like that cartoon is a bit too racist.