Plenary focus - October I

As co-rapporteur I insisted that investors’ obligations be included alongside a clear definition of what sort of protection should be available for investments. The cultural sector must be exempt. We must safeguard social, health and environmental policy. There will be an embattled vote on the possibility of investors launching a dispute settlement panel directly against governments. The GUE/NGL rejects this. We emphasise the role of ordinary courts instead, in addition to state-to-state dispute settlement and mediation mechanisms.

The purpose of the TFTP agreement is precisely to provide the US with access to financial data and we have consistently opposed it as it does not provide sufficient guarantees for European citizens’ fundamental rights. But the US is using this agreement only for data that they cannot access by any other means. So the US is violating this weak arrangement in order to spy on everybody around the globe without any restrictions. It is imperative to terminate this agreement now.

Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) are essential for safeguarding public interest and nature conservation in decision making in public and private projects. We believe they should be improved, learning from practical experiences. We defend the public’s right to request the use of this instrument in projects of interest, through active participation mechanisms involving populations, local authorities or NGOs. Transparency, public accessibility, including through the Internet, is essential, and comments must be taken into account to improve the quality of decisions and contribute to public awareness of environmental issues.