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Ahead of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) negotiations in Indonesia next week, a total of 316 civil society organizations from across Asia Pacific region have called upon the trade ministers and negotiators to reject attempts to 'import Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) texts into the RCEP which have been soundly rejected by the American people.
If implemented, the TPP would have extended pharmaceutical company monopolies and prevented people from accessing life-saving medicines by blocking or delaying the availability of low priced generic drugs. Additionally, the TPP would dismantle public health safeguards and force developing countries to change their laws to incorporate abusive intellectual property protections for pharmaceutical companies, making it harder for people – and also organizations like MSF that serve them – to buy the affordable medicines they need.
In an open letter to the governments in the 16 RCEP countries, the civil society organizations urged negotiators to revisit the trade relations between the 16 countries as a new model must be based on cooperation and not competition, that puts the development needs of the region above that of corporations, and puts people and the environment at its centre, that recognizes economic policy can work only if it is inclusive, not only in terms of the impact on different constituencies but also if it integrates the social and environmental concerns of the world.
Ten ASEAN Member States and China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand are the members of the RCEP.
In the open letter, the civil society organizations said that this letter comes at a very important political moment, when in the aftermath of the US elections it seems clear that the TPP will not be ratified by the USA, in spite of its big push since February 2016 when the agreement was signed by the 12 countries. It is clear that the TPP has been soundly rejected by the American people and there has also been widespread opposition to it in other TPP countries on both sides of the Pacific. According to the TPP text, if the US does not ratify it, the TPP cannot come into force.
The current negotiations in RCEP are complicated by the fact that there are 6 countries which are part of the TPP and there have been many attempts to import TPP texts into RCEP and sometimes even an attempt to go beyond the TPP.
A few examples below bear testimony to how TPP wording is being proposed in RCEP. In the investment chapter, apart from a few safeguards, all the TPP’s substantive and main investor-to-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions have been proposed in the leaked RCEP investment chapter. In services, for example, all the substantive TPP telecommunications chapter rules have been proposed in RCEP according to the leaked RCEP text. In RCEP’s leaked draft e-commerce terms of reference, all the TPP e-commerce chapter rules appear to be proposed and all the RCEP e-commerce ideas appear to come from the TPP, therefore proposing an exact match of the texts. In the leaked RCEP intellectual property (IP) chapter, Japan, South Korea and some others are pushing many of the main substantive stronger IP provisions of the TPP.
With the demise of the TPP, there is no justification for adhering to the TPP texts in RCEP because these have no mandate. This is even more irrational in the absence of the TPP as Asian countries (including least developed countries (LDCs)) would end up carrying the load that other rich countries in the TPP (US, Canada) will not have to bear any more. The RCEP texts which have leaked so far have many fundamental problems that will negatively impact all sectors of society in RCEP countries.
We call upon the governments participating in the RCEP, to recognize this critical moment and not to bring the toxic content of the TPP into the RCEP and instead to stop the RCEP negotiations, the civil society organizations said in the letter.
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