New ISDS is “little more than putting lipstick on a particularly unpopular pig”

Date: 12 November 2015

Today Cecilia Malmström, the European Commissioner for trade will release final plans for an alternative system to the Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism that had proved to be so widely controversial in the EU-USA trade deal TTIP. In response Guy Taylor, the trade campaigner at Global Justice Now, said:

“The Commission is clearly feeling the intense pressure of public feeling against TTIP and ISDS, but its proposal today amounts to little more than putting lipstick on a particularly unpopular pig. this ‘new’ system retains most of the major problems with ISDS. It effectively provides corporations with a taxpayer underwritten risk insurance should governments feel the need to protect labour rights, the environment or vital public services.

“At a time when politicians are pushing draconian cuts to public services in the name of austerity, it seems strange that governments would want to prioritise spending billions of euros to set up this proposed new system of corporate courts when the USA and countries in the EU have some of the most complex and well developed legal systems of anywhere in the world. If domestic courts are good enough for the rest of society, why are they not suitable for corporations? Like almost all aspects of TTIP, this is an attempt to carve out a sphere of privilege and advantage for the corporate sector at the expense of everyone else.”