GATS: How the WTO's New "Services" Negotiations Threaten Democracy

The current round of GATS re-negotiation, in which every service is on the negotiating table, is only the first in a series of successive rounds planned to broaden and deepen the agreement. [...] While the real trade-offs and arm-twisting may only take place in the latter stages of negotiations, the collective decisions made by negotiators in this early "rule-making" phase of the talks could profoundly affect the scope and coverage of any revised GATS package that emerges from this negotiating round. [...] While these implications of the current agreement are already disturbing, the potential effects of the current negotiations to broaden and deepen the agreement go even further. [...] Once the implications of coverage under the existing GATS framework are better understood, then attention must turn to the implications of the new areas under negotiation. [...] The tasks still ahead are: research • analysis • solutions • to analyze, and widely publicize, the sectoral implications of existing GATS provisions, • to provide analytical support to citizens' efforts to stall and then to reverse the current momentum to broaden, deepen and expand the GATS, • to push fundamental structural reform of the GATS on to the international negotiating agenda, and • to pr.