European Trade Union Committee for Education

Ahead of EU-US trade negotiations the American and European trade unions – AFL-CIO and ETUC have issued a Declaration of Joint Principles. "The AFL-CIO and ETUC demand a commitment from the E.U. and U.S. to achieve a "gold standard" agreement that improves living and working conditions on both sides of the Atlantic and guards against any attempt to use the agreement to lower standards or impinge on democratic decision making.  The risk of the current model of trade and economic integration agreements to democratic decision making cannot be overstated.  The U.S. has already lost state-to-state challenges to its anti-smoking, meat labelling, and tuna labelling policies and even now, European multinationals are using the investor-to-state system to challenge decisions to phase out nuclear energy and raise minimum wages.  Simply put, these policies are part of a government's most basic responsibility to promote the general welfare of its people."

The declaration clearly includes the ETUCE demand to carve-out education and public services: "The AFL-CIO and ETUC demand an exclusion of public services from the negotiations. The negotiators must meet the demands to carve out public services, including education, health and social services, water supply, postal services and public transportation from the scope of the agreement. A positive list approach must be taken to avoid opening liberalisation to services not explicitly listed."

Read the Declaration of Joint Principles ETUC/AFL-CIO: TTIP Must Work for the People, or It Won't Work at All