New Zealand TPP Talks More Secretive than Previous Rounds, Public Interest Groups Say
The 15th round of Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations are more secretive than previous rounds, said a joint statement from a group of stakeholders attending the negotiations. Unlike previous rounds of negotiations, the most recent of which took place in Leesburg, Va., stakeholders are allowed on the premises during negotiations only on one of the ten days, said the group, which includes the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Knowledge Ecology International and Consumers International. The negotiations are at the SkyCity Convention Centre in Auckland, New Zealand.
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Being "locked out of the entire venue" prevents stakeholders from interacting with negotiators outside of the actual negotiations themselves, the group said. EFF Activist Parker Higgins told us stakeholders typically interact with negotiators in the hallways or lobbies outside of negotiation spaces. In New Zealand, he said, "unless you're a delegate, you're not allowed in." During previous rounds, "we could access the lobby and other publicly-accessible areas, which was a very useful way to speak directly with negotiators during their breaks," said Jodie Griffin, staff attorney at Public Knowledge, which did not send staff members to New Zealand but has been communicating with other public interest groups there who have said they are being denied access to public parts of the facility.
Only some stakeholders are experiencing the increased restrictions, stakeholders wrote. Lobbyists "looking to protect their outdated business models have, if anything, been provided greater access and influence over the drafting of the agreement than our groups," said the group's statement. Griffin could not confirm that stakeholders are receiving different treatment, but said, "if true it would be very troubling and would only deepen concerns that the TPP negotiation process has locked out civil society while allowing industry stakeholders the ability to access and influence the text."
The structure for stakeholders to interact with negotiators is "determined by the venue, at least on paper," Higgins said. While there have been no formal complaints that the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has pushed New Zealand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) for a more secretive setup, "there's an undercurrent of concern" that the U.S. played a role in the new restrictions, Higgins said, because the "U.S. delegation is ... more committed to the secrecy of things."
These restrictions are "reflective of the ongoing lack of transparency that has plagued the TPP negotiations from the very beginning," the stakeholders wrote. In the lead-up to the Leesburg round of negotiations, USTR changed the amount of time stakeholders would have for presentations to negotiators, first from 15 minutes to eight minutes, then to 10 minutes. In addition to restrictions on interacting with negotiators, delegates do not publicly release negotiation drafts.
The TPP negotiation process needs to be kept confidential, MFAT wrote in a blog post this week. A confidential negotiation process, which "is common to many international processes," provides "space to work through these issues, for governments to consider their policy positions, and for negotiators to work together to construct solutions that are acceptable to all Parties," MFAT wrote. The blog post is (here).
Stakeholders are "extensively" involved in the negotiation process, the blog post said. In the post, MFAT said negotiators "engage regularly with members of the public in the lead up to negotiating rounds" and "have met with over 50 stakeholders groups, including business groups, local councils, health sector representatives, unions, NGOs, academics and other stakeholders" in the last month to prepare for the current round of negotiations, as well as engaging with members of the media. Neither MFAT nor the USTR responded to requests for comment. -- Kate Tummarello