Corrupt “Secret” Global Trade and Investor Agreements: EU Facilitating Corporate Plunder
Colin Todhunter
RINF.com
Mar. 11, 2014
Since the economic crisis hit Europe, international investors have begun suing EU countries struggling under austerity and recession for a loss of expected profits, using international trade and investment agreements. Speculative investors are claiming more than 1.7 billion Euros in compensation from Greece, Spainand Cyprus in private international tribunals for the impact of measures implemented to deal with economic crises. This is the conclusion from a new report released by the Transnational Institute (TNI) and Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO).
The report, ‘Profiting from Crisis – How corporations and lawyers are scavenging profits from Europe’s crisis countries’ (1), exposes a growing wave of corporate lawsuits against Europe’s struggling economies, which could lead to European taxpayers paying out millions of euros in a second major public bailout, this time to speculative investors.
These lawsuits provide a warning of the potential high costs of the proposed trade deal between theUS and the EU, which has just begun its fourth round of negotiations in Brussels.
Pia Eberhardt, trade campaigner with CEO and co-author of the report says:
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