With the title “How the EU is making NHS privatisation permanent” The New Statesman further analyses the effects of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) launched in June at the G8 meeting, in particular with reference to the looming onslaught on the UK National Health Service. “This will open the floodgates for private healthcare providers that have made dizzying levels of profits from healthcare in the United States, while lobbying furiously against any attempts by President Obama to provide free care for people living in poverty. With the help of the Conservative government and soon the EU, these companies will soon be let loose, freed to do the same in Britain.

“Linda Kaucher is a leading expert on trade agreements. She has written and spoken extensively on the topic, most recently in an article in Chartist. In it, she lays out a disturbing truth about what is going on behind the scenes in Brussels, arguing that while on the surface the EU is a bastion of protections and rights, its true agenda is far more tenebrous.

“It is, she says, to “permanently fix corporate-driven neo-liberalism, within the EU and internationally, via trade agreements. Any reassertion of democracy within the EU structure or member states is prevented by legally binding international trade law.” She also states that the agenda is “driven and effectively controlled by transnational corporations, especially transnational financial services corporations.”

“How does this affect the NHS? It’s painfully simple. The agreement will provide a legal heavy hand to the corporations seeking to grind down the health service. It will act as a Transatlantic bridge between the Health and Social Care Act in the UK, which forces the NHS to compete for contracts, and the private companies in the US eager to take it on for their own gain.

“Kaucher says: “[The Health and Social Care Act] effectively enforces competitive tendering, and thus privatisation and liberalisation i.e. opening to transnational bidders – a shift to US-style profit-prioritised health provision.”

Is the damage irreversible?

This is by no means done and dusted. The Second round of negotiations happened in November. The third one will be held on December 16-20 in Washington. Different campaigns are now developing to try and stop its implementation. An e petition “Exempt the NHS from the US/EU Free Trade Agreement” closed in September with less than 11,500 signatures. 38degrees  is doing better, close to achieving its target of 650000 signatures, and Occupy London has just launched a Stop the TTIP group to inform and campaign. However, when something is presented to the public shrouded in business-speak and legalese, as the official discussions about this agreement have been, it is no small wonder that it is failing to produce the popular tidal wave of protest it deserves.

Moreover, corporate Media are not saying much about it and when they do it appears that we are dealing with consummated facts rather than proposals on the negotiating table.

Lessons from Latin America

“On November 6th, 2011, over 5,000 people gathered in Mar del Plata [Argentina] to commemorate the sixth anniversary of the “IV Summit of the Americas” where Latin American presidents rejected the US-led initiative to establish a free trade zone for the entire region with the exception of Cuba. US President, George Bush, had come to the Argentine resort in 2005 looking to reach agreement on the Free Trade Area of the Americas, or ALCA as it is known in Spanish, but was rebuffed by his Latin American counterparts, led by the late Nestor Kirchner, then President of the host country…. Political shifts have led to the emergence of proposals regarded as alternatives to the hegemony of neo-liberalism and for the development of individual countries and the wider region…Two major initiatives have emerged in the form of the South American Union of Nations (UNASUR) and the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), both of which focus on regional integration but with distinct objectives….ALBA project is in direct opposition to the ALCA and is significantly different to UNASUR in a number of ways. Its objectives are fundamentally political as well as economic. The inspiration for the organisation came largely from the Hemispheric Social Alliance, an alliance of diverse social movements that had been leading resistance to the neo-liberal free trade agenda.” Latin America 2013

If Parliaments can stop a war against Syria they can also stop a war against their own people, if the public mood is clear enough and expresses itself through all possible means.