Global Policy Forum

No to Global Investment Treaty

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By Aslak Bonde

Translated by Jonivar Skullerud
June 1999

Yet again, foreign minister Knut Vollebí¦k has given a report to Parliament which all parties except the Socialist Left are satisfied with. His report on the upcoming WTO negotiations on a freer and wider world trade contained exactly the same round, but indicative formulations as usual:

A small country

  • Norway is, as a small country, especially dependent on international trade rules. Norwegian business interests have a lot to win from other countries opening their markets for foreign competition. At the same time, these attacking interests must be weighed against the negative, which are that the norwegian farming sector can lose out, because WTO works to reduce the subsidies in each country.

    On one issue however, the foreign minister stated an opinion which differed from what we have heard from his own civil service. He told that the Government now believes it is far to complicated to work for getting negotiations underway about an investment treaty within WTO.

    This is a completely different sound from only a few months ago. A report from the junior minster group for the WTO negotiations said that norwegian interests will gain from negotiations on international rules on investments. The junior minister group was led by í…slaug Haga, who has later become deputy leader of the Centre Party and junior minister in the Prime Ministers office. She has been strongly criticised by the free trade sceptics within her own party because she did not clearly oppose what was seen as a replacement for MAI.

    MAI was being negotiated under the auspices of the OECD, but was torpedoed by France after free trade and WTO sceptics all over the world had become active against it.

    Negative

    Although the critics at home are happy with the breakthrough on this one point, the general evaluation is negative:

  • Vollebí¦k gave a very weak analysis of how the WTO system works. He gave the impression that free trade and market mechanisms work to the advantage of poor countries. This is at best only partly true, says the Socialist Lefts Karin Andersen.

    More Information on the Multilateral Agreement on Investment
    More Information on the World Trade Organization

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    FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.