Joint statement by activists and organisations against the signing of the Chile-EU Treaty

Stop Colonial Plunder! Joint Statement Against the signing of the Chile-EU Treaty

Organisations, politicians and activists from the European Union and Chile signed a joint declaration promoted by Chile Mejor sin TLC, Against the Chile/European Union Treaty, signed on 13/Dec 2023 by their respective governments to officially start its processing.  The Joint Declaration Chile without FTA plus MPs and organisations from Chile and the EU was supported by 13 parliamentarians, 145 organisations and a total of 490 adherents from both sides.

It announces that this treaty negotiated in secret and signed with a total lack of transparency will deepen the deterioration of the quality of life and the socio-environmental and labour rights of the people. In Chile, there is no public information on the 41 chapters of the Agreement. Its colonial dimension is also evident in that it allows the EU to use Chilean military manpower to achieve objectives of its interest, risking the peace and neutrality of the country and possible reprisals derived from the alignment of the European Union with the United States and its complicity with the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Its provisions promote increased extraction and export of minerals, with privileged access for the EU to these and other raw materials, as well as energy and infrastructure. It will be impossible to make investment conditional on transferring technology, or having national managers in joint ventures, deepening the extractivist model based on the export of raw materials. All the advantages go to European investors. The treaty in fact inhibits the broad power that the Chilean state enjoys to freely fix with the concessionary companies the value of the lithium rent and the amount of mineral to be exploited. The Chilean constitution defines lithium as a “non-concessionable” strategic material, and for its exploitation CODELCO is currently negotiating new Special Lithium Operating Contracts (CEOL). But the Agreement stipulates that the export price to the EU of all strategic raw materials must be equal to the price of these on the domestic market or the price set in deals with foreigners, which is affected by the various existing CEOLs with mining companies. Exceptions to the EU’s price control are allowed, in order to generate value-added products, but only if this measure does not affect the interests and needs of the EU.

By razing biodiverse territories in the north and south, Chile will supply the European energy transition with lithium, copper, rare earths and so-called Green Hydrogen.  The main problem of lithium exploitation is that it generates the loss of large quantities of fresh and brine water, and the destruction of salt flats. This will take place in Atacama, a territory of valuable biodiversity and ancestral home of indigenous peoples. The Chilean government omitted Indigenous Consultation (ILO Convention 169).

Extensive territories in Chile already suffer from drought or are contaminated by mining. Chile would be a long-distance supplier colony of fuel and lithium for European electric car batteries. The socio-environmental cost includes the forced displacement of indigenous and peasant populations, with new sacrifice zones.

The energy required on a large scale for HVerde will be obtained from photovoltaic or wind mega-plants installed in critical agricultural areas of central and south-central Chile, from vegetable producers, decreasing domestic food production, which will be more expensive. But the EU will maintain subsidies to its farmers. Mass production and export of Green Hydrogen requires 10 litres of demineralised fresh water for every kilo of “green” hydrogen. Desalination will take place without production or use standards, only under corporate “self-regulation”.

The impacts of the water crisis finally fall on women and their care work. Many families affected by the consequences of the agro-export industry of avocados, wine, European hazelnuts, salmon or others whose production is encouraged by this treaty, only receive water in tanker trucks, in insufficient quantities; they cannot grow vegetable gardens, nor can they count on healthy food and natural medicine. They live in danger from fires, the expansion of aquaculture and reproductive illnesses in women and cancer. The agreement does not prevent the export to Chile of the more than 50 highly hazardous pesticides banned in the EU and registered in Chile, hindering the agro-ecological transition desired by peasant, indigenous and popular sectors in Chile and the European Union. But the Treaty also provides for Chile to adhere to the UPOV 91 convention, a historic demand of Bayer/Monsanto and other seed corporations. The intellectual property chapter includes 18 treaties binding on the parties.

This agreement deepens the asymmetry between the two economies in terms of production and technology innovation. Chile ranks last in terms of the percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) devoted to investment and development. In 2022, the EU’s GDP reached €13,360,337 (million euros). In Chile it was only 285,355 M€.  The EU registers 172,518 trademarks, but only 24 of the Chilean trademarks have international validity. The treaty allows patents in the pharmaceutical sector to be extended to 11 years, for delaying their approval or for “new uses” discovered in the EU for certain biological medicines, delaying the entry into the national market of generic medicines, hitting family economies.

Experienced European companies will compete unfairly in public procurement tenders with Chilean small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), risking the bankruptcy of the latter and the dismissal of their mainly female staff. Access to data by large technology companies will allow them to extract and store key information on Chileans, affecting citizens’ right to privacy and the state’s right to regulate digital commerce for tax collection or in the public interest.

Finally, it is pointed out that, in difficult times for both parties, Chile and the EU will have to integrate the high cost of a Permanent Dispute Settlement System into their annual budget. There will be less money for health, housing, or education. The judges of this permanent tribunal, already included in the EU-Canada agreement (CETA), follow the same rules contained in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). But neither the state nor communities will be able to sue investors.  An investor can sue the state for “indirect expropriation” if it is denied permission to exploit lithium on the basis of the National Lithium Strategy, which includes preserving 30% of the salt flats. The French company, Eremet, has just bought 120,000 hectares of unexploited salt flats mining concessions. The treaty ensures the expectation of profit for all investors.

A selection from the list of firms

Among the 485 signatories are 7 MEPs from the European Left, Ana Miranda (Bloque Nacionalista Galego), Idoia Villanueva (Podemos), Leila Chaibi (Francia Insoumise), Miguel Urban (Anticapitalista), Manu Pineda (Izquierda Unida), Pierre Larroutourou (France, Nouvelle Donne), Stelios Kouloglou (Greece, Radical Left); and from national parliaments Lorena Delgado (Left, Sweden); Rodrigo Arenas, France Insoumise), Engracia Rivera and Francisco Sierra (Sumar, Spain).   Chilean MPs Emilia Nuyado (Socialist) and Hernán Palma (Transformar Chile), together with the Mayor of Recoleta, Daniel Jadue, signed the declaration. Also from the EU, the European Left bloc, the France Insoumise movement, and the Communist Refoundation Party. In Chile, the Equality Party, the Communist Party (Proletarian Action) and the Anti-Capitalist and Popular Platform have signed on.  Among the adhering academics are Sergio Grez Tosso, Francisca Eugenia Dos Santos, María Eugenia Góngora, Marco Aparicio, Diego Pinto, Carlos Ruiz E, Rainer Hauser, Francisca Fernández, Martín Sanzana, Soledad Falabella, Nuriluz Hermosilla, German Westphal and Carla Poth.  The Escuela Superior Campesina de Curaco de Vélez, Chiloé, also subscribes to this rejection. Among the signing artists and personalities are Carmen Castillo, Ana Harcha, Bernardo de Castro, María Guelfenbein, Cata Veas, Irina Holstrom, Pía Lorca, Marcela Rosen, Manuel Cabieses of Punto No End, as well as the former convention members (2021/22) Fernando Salinas and Elisa Giustinianovich.

At the social level, leaders such as Vilma Mellado (Conflicto por megaplanteles eólicos, Ciruelo Sur) and Paula Rodríguez (Catemu), the organisations Chile Mejor sin TLC, OLCA, ANAMURI, MAT, Slow Food Chile, Comunidad Apicultores Orgánicos de Chile, Red de Acción por la Justicia Ambiental, Coordinadora Nacional Migrantes; Coordinadora Nacional No más AFP, Comisión Chilena de Derechos Humanos, Comisión Ética Contra la Tortura, Fundaciones Constituyente XXI, Miguel Enríquez, Tanti, Chile Sustentable, El Árbol, Proyecto Wayra and Corporación Desarrollo de Aysén. Supported by Red de Acción en Plaguicidas Chile; AntiMafia 2000, Observatorio por el Cierre de la Escuela de las Américas, Viernes por el Futuro Chile and Federación de Estudiantes de Ciencias Ambientales. Supported by Mercado de la Tierra Marga Marga, community environmental committees of Penco and Casa Blanca, neighbourhood councils (Renaico and others); Hidrodefensa, the ecological councils of Molina and Casablanca; Asamblea San Miguel, Tierra Florida, Asoc. Agricultores Prodesal Paillaco, Catemu en movimiento, Centro Ecoceanos, Sindicato nacional profesionales CONAF; Salvemos Olmué; Eco San Joaquín; MOSACAT, Chile sin Ecocidio.   Signed by Mujeres de Zona de Sacrificio, Mujeres Rurales de Pinto y de Curicó; Atavid Cauquenes, Red de Mujeres Penco-Lirquén, Feministas Zona Oriente, Mujeres en Marcha Chile, Mujeres Democráticas, Frente de Mujeres por la Refundación de Chile, Asociación de Mujeres Insulares de Chiloé, colectiva Las Fieras de Ancud. The Agrupación Terramar; Reserva de la Biosfera Campana Peñuelas, the Red de Abastecimiento de Peñalolén, the Asociación de Pensionados y Jubilados; Acción Cultural Huitral Mapu; the indigenous organisations Cdad. Diaguita Campillay Guacalagasta, Antu Kai Mawen, Ad Kimun, and Cdad. Grupos Familiares Nómades del Mar (Kawesquar). The Agrupación de Familiares de Ejecutados Políticos, Londres 38, Cdad. Martin Luther King, Comisión DDHH de Colegio de Antropólogos, several Associations of ex PP and por la Memoria, and media such as the magazine La Estaca, Radio L.E Recabarren, TV Liberación M. Enríquez, and the collective Comuntivo Comunicacion Comunicativo de la Muerte. Enríquez, and the ComuniKaos collective. The Coordinadora por Palestina and Anti-Zionist Jews against Apartheid and Occupation also joined in.

From the EU, the following organisations from Spain stand out: ATTAK, Ecologistas en Acción (Cantabria and Catalonia), Sol de Paz Pachakuti (Asturias), ELA (Basque Country), Asoc. Vida Sana, Mujeres de Negro contra la Guerra (Seville), Trawunche Madrid, Centro de Asesoría y Estudios Sociales CAES, Solidaridad Internacional, and Asociación DDHH (Andalucía); Confederación General del Trabajo, Garbancita Ecológica, and Sociedad Española de Agricultura Ecológica y Agroecología. They are joined by Transnational Institute, Grain, the Chile-Latin America Research and Documentation Centre (Germany); Working Group Food Justice, and Women’s Int. League for Peace and Freedom (Netherlands); Troca (Platform for Fair International Trade, Portugal), Citoyen and the Association of Former Chilean Prisoners (France); and the International Network for Political Prisoners in Chile.   At the regional ambit, signatories include América Latina Mejor sin TLC, Argentina Mejor sin TLC, Amigos de la Tierra (Argentina), Observatorio de Multinacionales en América Latina and Comisión Nacional de Enlace (Costa Rica). At the global level, ECOAR, NGO Africando, Senegal, and the Alba Information office in Tunis, Africa.

Conclusion

This is a treaty of the last century: it compromises the future of the peoples in Chile and the European Union by generating neo-colonial dependency in times of struggle for decolonisation. The European Union would backtrack on its commitments on human rights and the environment, instead of relating in a framework of peace, respect and cooperation, prioritising life, learning and collaboration between peoples, sustainable production and environmental and climate justice.

The peoples of Chile and the nations of the European Union require environmental justice!

 To reject this Free Trade Agreement is to secure our common future!

Contact: spokesperson Lucía Sepúlveda 990023729, lusr20@gmail.com