New Zealand’s Green Party Turns The Fight Against TPP To International Levels

August 21, 2012 by
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues 

While in Canada the Trans-Pacific Partnership has been viewed by the media as nothing of great interest, New Zealand’s Green Party is busy opening eyes on how dangerous the agreement’s provisions really are. As such, they did not stop to fight the TPP locally, but decided to take their cause at international levels.

Last week Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel paid a visit to Canada. While the visit was seen by the media as a sign that Canada still has something to say in the world, mentioning the Trans-Pacific Partnership only showed that the country has no quarrel with the agreement – in fact, it sees it as a beneficial factor. One article published by The Globe and Mail called Canada’s inability to review their intellectual property laws “mystifying”.

Meanwhile, NZ’s Green Party is starting to take the fight even further by informing people worldwide about what really is the TPP. A joint statement between NZ’s Green Party counterparts, specifically the Australian Green Party and the Canadian Green Party saw the light of the day, highlighting and criticizing the agreement:

As the Green parliamentary political parties of three nations whose governments are currently in the process of negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), we are issuing this joint statement to express our serious concern at the fundamentally undemocratic and non-transparent nature of the agreement.

Following the leaking of the draft investment chapter of the TPPA the Greens are extremely concerned that the TPPA agreement has the potential to undermine the ability of our governments to perform effectively. More than just another trade agreement, the TPPA provisions could hinder access to safe, affordable medicines, weaken local content rules for media, stifle high-tech innovation, and even restrict the ability of future governments to legislate for the good of public health and the environment.

We believe that the process should be transparent. This agreement has been negotiated behind closed doors with a level of secrecy that is completely unacceptable in a democratic society.

This article further explains why the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a great threat to any democratic society. What are these threats consisted of can be clearly seen here and here.

Not surprisingly, the statement gained the attention of New Zealand’s MSN, News Talk ZB, and even made an appearance at the Sky News Australia.

What kind of impact these efforts will have in the near future remains to be seen, but the precedent exists and we are confident that people will rise up and fight against any threat to their democratic way of thinking.

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