Trade, Public Services and the Lisbon Treaty

dublin | eu | event notice Friday March 28, 2008 21:58 by John Meehan - CAEUC

YES to Publicly Funded Healthcare - NO to the Lisbon Treaty

CAEUC Public Meeting
Trade, Public Services and the Lisbon Treaty
Speakers include Susan George activist and author of We the Peoples of Europe and Marie O’Connor author of Emergency: Irish Hospitals in Chaos

DATE: Friday 11th April at 8pm
VENUE: Teachers Club (Theatre)

Find out more about the Lisbon Treaty and to get involved see the Campaign Against the EU Constitution’s website
www.caeuc.org

The Irish healthcare system is in crisis and everyday we hear new stories about people being denied treatment, waiting for days on trolleys and further cutbacks in essential services.
The health service is being driven into crisis by a Fianna Fail-PD-Green government whose aim is to outsource and privatise as much as possible. There are already American private health corporations, some of which are mired by healthcare fraud, involved in Harney's co-located private hospitals

CAEUC Public Meeting
Trade, Public Services and the Lisbon Treaty
Speakers include Susan George activist and author of We the Peoples of Europe and Marie O’Connor author of Emergency: Irish Hospitals in Chaos

DATE: Friday 11th April at 8pm
VENUE: Teachers Club (Theatre)

Find out more about the Lisbon Treaty and to get involved see the Campaign Against the EU Constitution’s website
www.caeuc.org

Campaign Against the EU Constitution
YES to Publicly Funded Healthcare
NO to the Lisbon Treaty
The Irish healthcare system is in crisis and everyday we hear new stories about people being denied treatment, waiting for days on trolleys and further cutbacks in essential services.
The health service is being driven into crisis by a Fianna Fail-PD-Green government whose aim is to outsource and privatise as much as possible. There are already American private health corporations, some of which are mired by healthcare fraud, involved in Harney's co-located private hospitals.
The Lisbon Treaty, which we will vote on in June, would make it harder to stop this. When we object to government policy we can mobilise and demand change, or we can vote them out. But policies put in place by Lisbon would be impossible to reverse and would create international legal obstacles to getting a decent health service.
How would Lisbon put our health care system at risk?
Lisbon would establish in law, the principle of international trade in all public services - including health and education. It would give the EU the power to issue guidelines to governments on how they manage their budgets and how they finance public services.
The experience of Britain, Canada and Australia shows that as more services are privatised, insurance premiums rise, the quality of care falls and public waiting lists get longer. EU treaties allow governments to set out what health services should provide. But when it comes to actually delivering the service, the EU’s market and competition rules apply. Private contractors will be allowed bid to deliver parts of a service for which charges can be levied. This already applies to outsourced contracts, and could be applied to ‘internal’ charges between hospital departments.
Catering and cleaning is already outsourced, and we know that contract cleaning has helped spread MRSA. Ambulances, lab testing, radiology - and some cancer treatment - are already being privatised. International agreements at the World Trade Organisation (WTO), made by the EU on our behalf, to let multinationals deliver these services would make it much harder to reverse privatisation and repair the damage. Lisbon would make it easier for the EU to make these trade agreements.
Health: Just another service for Sale?
Lisbon would also remove the power to veto proposals for international trade in health, education and social services that the EU makes on our behalf at the WTO. A proposal could include the removal of regulations so that parts of the health service could be outsourced to multinationals. Lisbon would make it more difficult to veto such proposals.
A veto would only be available when trade would “risk seriously disturbing the national organisation of such services and prejudicing the responsibility of Member States to deliver them”, a risk it would be very hard to prove. As long as 55% of the Council of Ministers agreed with a proposal, the rest would be overruled. This is what supporters of Lisbon call “greater efficiency”.

Vote NO to Lisbon - Vote YES to Public Services
Arguments that health and social care would be protected under Lisbon simply don't hold water. If there is no intention to turn as much of these essential services as possible into private businesses, why does the Treaty have a clause that specifies when trade in such services can be vetoed?
The EU's commitment to 'liberalise trade in services', strengthened by Lisbon, will only make our health service worse. Lisbon will make profitability rather than quality care a key issue. For these reasons it should be rejected.