|
VoteNo.ie Emergency Appeal For Funds. Help us to win Please Donate here
The Lisbon treaty and
Health care
On 5th
September 2006, the EU Health Commissioner, Markos Kyprianou, was
reported as saying that the European Commission is going to promote greater
privatisation of health.
The EU Health Commissioner said
"the internal market applies to health services. People can shop around.
Opening the market could provide lucrative opportunities for private providers
to lure clients".1
It was a clearest indication to date
of the desire of the EU elite to privatise whole swathes of the health
sector.
Privatisation has already started in
Ireland with Mary Harney's policy of 'co-location' and reducing staff numbers in
the public sector. Recently SIPTU ambulance drivers voted to strike against the
privatisation of the ambulance service.
The EU elite are trying to give their
policy an attractive covering by claiming that it will allow 'customers' to
access services outside their own borders. But just as in electricity, this will
require the 'opening up' of national health services so that a space is created
for smaller, for-profit entities.
Article 188 of the Lisbon Treaty will
speed up this process because it gives the EU Commission greater powers to
negotiation on a pro-globalisation agenda at the World Trade
Organisation.
The Treaty explicitly states that EU
policy will be based on 'the achievement of uniformity in measure of
liberalisation'.
Treaties negotiated with by the EU
will be legally binding on all member states and a national veto will be
removed.
This will enable the EU elite to
fast-track through a series of agreements under the general auspices on the
General Agreement on Trade in Services.
Countries will only be able to use a
national veto on agreements which 'liberalise' (aka privatise) health services
when they can show that 'these agreements risk seriously disturbing national
organisation' of the health service.
But the European Court of Justice which make the
disgraceful Laval judgement is hardly likely to consider that private ambulance
operators will 'seriously disturb' a health
service.
|
