Sais decision approves, with small adjustments and revisions, a draft issued and set for public consultation in August 2016, against which objections and reservations have publicly been expressed by Savegreekwater, as well as several other interested parties.

Through this Decision (nr. 135275, GG Β1751) water services users will be from now on burdened with paying the so called Recovery Costs of said services. Water has become a commodity, while water services companies will not differ anymore to any private profit-oriented and money-grabbing enterprise, despite them being constitutionally considered public services.

Specifically: the pricing of water services, contrary to the stipulations of Decision 1906/2014 of the Council of State, will aim to covering all costs of the company providing these (art. 9.1). Such pricing will include following items:

A’ Financial Cost (art. 4 and Annex Ι): this will include the cost of the invested capital, based on the annual depreciation of the provider’s assets; alternative use cost based on the profits the invested capital would yield if used for other purposes; operation cost, based on both standard and extraordinary operation expenses; maintenance cost; and management cost which includes the fees of any third parties. If water has to be transported to an arid area the users will be burdened with the extra cost, unless a state subsidy is available. All this leads to water services users in Greece being asked not only to pay once more for water services infrastructures and network, which have been paid through taxation both by this and several previous generations (this has happened several times in the near past) but also to cover any sums a water company will claim (with hindsight) as loss of profit for having its capital used to supply water instead of having been invested in some other “profitable” activity. That such activities may include absolutely anything has been proved by EYDAP’s contribution to last year’s capital  increase of Attica Bank: this led to EYDAP losing € 17 million out of 20. As an addition the financial cost includes a “reasonable return” of private funds invested with EYDAP and/or EYATh: for the nth time the Greek Government interprets private enterprise as state guaranteed profits.

B’ Environmental cost (art. 5 and Annex ΙΙ), which, among others, will be imposed also on the occasion of a negative chemical condition of subterranean water deposits due to non-natural (sic) causes. Everyone knows of the Government of Greece being hesitant to impose fines on polluting businesses, but someone has to pay the cost, and the users of water services may prove an easy target.

C’ Resource cost (art. 6 and Annex ΙΙΙ) which includes costs incurred due to the bad management of water resources. No penalty for those responsible for such bad management is imposed. The environmental cost and the resource cost added up (art. 7) will constitute the Environmental Fees: such shall be written “clearly and explicitly” on the bill (as are the fees paid by energy users for similar reasons and ending up becoming subsidies to private businesses) and will be transferred, almost in its entirety, to the infamous Green Fund with the aim of being used, under quite general terms, in actions dealing with water. Vulnerable groups may be excluded from paying said environmental fees as are those entities that “through correct management of water resources contribute to the maintenance and/or improvement of the condition of such; these include enterprises dealing with waste re-use (there is a quite small number of such businesses in Greece, all belonging –directly or indirectly- to the richest 0,1%; q.e.d.)

Art. 9 (General pricing procedures) provides for an increase on bills if costs’ cut down does not by itself suffice for covering costs recovery. In order to convince the users that such increases will not be excessive it is stated that such cannot be higher than the GDP increase, or can be as high as double the GDP increase in certain cases (as if GDP fluctuations had anything to do with our personal income!)

Art. 14, titled “General Rules and Directions for the Improvement of Water Services”, actually lists conditions under which increases in water prices can be imposed.

As per the above this Decision proves that the negative results of water services privatization cannot only be reached through the transfer of water companies shares to private entities but can also be achieved by a State that long ago has stopped caring for the interests of its people preferring rather to protect and increase the profits of a small minority.

In addition there is recent Law 4472/2017 dealing (once more) with the transfer to the new Superfund of assets of the Greek State, among which the shares of EYDAP and EYATh: this law continues on the path of applying policies that have continuously been proved to be disastrous for the vast majority of the inhabitants of this country by targeting in general our economic and social well being and in particular our/everyone’s Right to Water.

This decision has been approved by ministers Panagiotis Skourletis (Interior), Dimos Papadimitriou (Economy and Progress), Eukleides Tsakalotos (Finances), Andreas Xanthos (Health), Christos Spirtzis (Infrastructures and Transport) and Evangelos Apostolou (Agriculture & Food) and (Deputy Minister of Environment and Power)

Members of many different organisations, scientific institutions and unions from all over Greece visited Brussels in the past two days and participated in the successful event about the future of water in Europe together representatives of movements from Ireland and Portugal, scientists and members of the European Water Movement such as Food and Water Europe and European Public Services Union.

One by one, the speakers who took the floor described the ongoing issues in their countries and as it was highlighted in the conclusions it became clear that the common denominator in all cases was the lack of actions from the European Commission’s side to answer positively to the demands of European citizens for the legislation of human right to water and sanitation, the halt to the pressure to privatize water and the protection of the resource from commodification. Special mention was made to the fact that the norm in water management is the public administration in a percentage of 90% globally while even the countries who privatized in the previous decades are now remunicipalising with an accelerated pace for the last 15 years.

You can watch all interventions in video. From Greece, three MEPs were present. Those were Mr Papadimoulis and Mr Kouloglou from SYRIZA (who however were not present at the time when the Greek case was discussed) and Mr Grammatikakis from Potami.

The day after the event an informal work group meeting was organized and a resolution has been adopted. The meeting was followed by a press conference. The speakers at the press conference were the organizer MEP Sakorafa (Greece), MEPs Lynn Boylan (Ireland), Stefan Eck (Germany), Joao Pimenta Lopez (Portugal) and unionists and activists from Greece: Mr Giorgos Sinioris , President of EYDAP Union (representing in the panel Unions of Athens, Mr Arhontopoulos President of the Emloyess Union of Thessaloniki and Mr Dragolas President of the Federation of Unions of the Municipal Water Companies of the periphery, Dr Kaklis, Professor of Hydrogeology from the Association of Greek Geologists, Mrs Kanellopoulou from SGW who read the resolution which was adopted and Mr Lymperis from SEKES – EYDAP.

You can watch the press conference by downloading this file to your computer.

Here follows the transcript of the intervention of Mrs Kanellopoulou from SGW in english:

“Much has been said the past months about the existential crisis of Europe and the rise of Euroscepticism. In fact our previous rendevouz in the European Parliament to discuss the future of the water services was annulled because of an emergency plenary on Brexit. Much is said yet little is being done as those with power and those without concur on the spreading of the so called democratic deficit in decision making and yet stay inert as if it is an unstoppable natural phenomenon like a tsunami.

We can all understand why this inertia trends and what a shipreck lies ahead.  
Nonetheless, for the time being most of us are on the EU deck drinking our cocktails while democracy, the Rule of Law and the fundamentals of the social contract which are essential for stability and prosperity in societies are diminished and distorted. Most do not seem to care about the iceberg ahead.

We count ourselves on the exceptions. As water activists we tend to be careful with icebergs and let me tell you about the big one we are facing since 2011 in our struggle to stop water privatization in Greece which has miraculously appeared as a clause and condition inscribed and carved repeatedly in the country’s loan agreements with its creditors.

Together with a lot of other activists, unions and organizations, we have run a successful campaign. We convinced with concrete arguments the vast majority of our co-citizens as the referendum of Thessaloniki proved and now Greeks, like Italians in the past, like Parisians and Berliners are contrary to this policy almost unanimously.

We have presented in many occasions in Greece and abroad the rational argumentation behind our position. EYDAP and EYATH servicing roughly 5 million and 1 million people respectively, have already one of the cheapest tariffs per cubic meter in Europe, they are profitable even during the crisis and have a lot of ongoing developmental projects, some of them subsidized by the EU. In our perplexed globalized world nothing is perfect, but in comparison to their titanic rivals of the private sector, the Greek water companies seem like little tidy houses in a landfill of debt and risk.

We’ve also worked hard at EU level by building alliances and pressure and of course we participated in the right2water campaign succeeding in doubling the signatories’ threshold.

Most importantly we won a favorable Supreme Court decision prohibiting the sell –off of more than 50% of the stocks of the water companies. Resting on this decision, we were hoping that the case was closed and that the pride of western civilization its democratic institutions were still standing!

To our ire, we discovered that Mr Tsipras, the Greek Prime Minister who has been till 2015 one of the most vocal supporters of the ECI right2water and a declared adversary of water privatization has somehow been convinced? to proceed with the following:

First his government has accepted to adopt the infamous asset development plan of 19 privatizations which is a binding part of the third memorandum. In this plan there is a provision to proceed with an unnecessary and against the public interest sell of 11% of EYDAP, the Athens water company and 23% of EYATH in Thessaloniki and there is also a scandalous provision for a capital return of 40 million euros from EYDAP’s cashiers to the stakeholders in an unprecedented mingling in a stock market company’s internal affairs. This 40 million on top of another 20 already returned in the form of dividends and the loss of 17 million in the form of an investment in Attica Bank has emptied the cashiers by 77 million and has resulted in putting to risk the economic health of the water service of 5 million people.

As if this was not enough, Mr Tsipras has mysteriously agreed to include both companies to the new Privatization Superfund which by its statute is an entity that does not belong to the public sector and whose Supervisory Board is controlled by the creditors. M. Jacques Le Pap, a French bureaucrat and former collaborator of Christine Lagarde in the French Ministry of Finance is now head of this board. There is not time to guide you through all the details of this new monster privatization fund which controls most of the remaining assets of the Greek State, you can read these in this documentation leaflet we have prepped but trust me when I say that in reality not only the cashiers of EYDAP where emptied but both companies now have had their management privatized in violation of the Supreme Court Decision. On top, the water services are being instrumentalised against their utility statute and are to become golden egg gooses to serve the new Fund’s scope.

Of course, we were never naïve. We know very well, what the lobbyists are doing behind closed doors all these years and why the giants of the private sector want to get their hands on the Greek people’s property. I will not lose my time to criticize their business practices. Businesses are businesses and they can be judged only as such.

The real culprits of the failure of the institutions I am talking about, are, I am afraid others, residing not far from us.

The time for hide and seek is over. We will not tolerate any longer the Commission and other European Institutions playing Schrodinger’s cat, supporting and not supporting privatization, in negotiations behind closed doors. We demand to know how the water services ended up as part of the third memorandum deal in violation of the article 345 of the EU Treaty. We are entitled to know under the Aarhus Regulation and the Transparency Regulation and we will not stop our struggle unless the water services get out of any kind of deals between the Greek Government and its creditors.

With this official document that we will also share in the press conference tomorrow we ask the European Council to disclose all relevant information and we want your support to pressure them for an answer.

Whatever is the answer, It is not the answer that makes us believe the man, but the man the answer to paraphrase the ancient tragic dramatist Aeschylus.
Even if this is presented as the Greek government’ s sovereign decision how are we to be convinced that there is anything sovereign about a government who has signed that it will not legislate anything without the consent of its creditors? And most importantly who is to be held accountable about the misery, poverty, and loss of civil and human rights in Greece? Who on earth are the true culprits and why don’t they come forth and take the responsibility of their actions?

We will do everything in our power together with our friends in the European Water Movement in Berlin, Paris, Italy, Ireland, Slovenia, Portugal, Spain to secure for our co-citizens their right to water. We will not tolerate those who establish institutions of direct democracy and then turn them obsolete by their own lack of actions. We are not going to pretend that there are still democratic procedures by participating in written monologues about best practices in drinking water when the huge iceberg of turning a deaf ear to the citizen’s will and their successful struggles in all Europe stands huge in our EU course.

To legislate the human right to water, to stop the liberalization of water services in EU treaties and trade deals, to stop demanding from indebted countries to surrender their profitable water services as a prerequisite in austerity programs is the right thing to do. And it is such because it is the expressed will of the peoples of Europe. The iceberg will melt under the unified warmth of our hearts and efforts because If you get to a point where the existing institutions will not bend to the popular will, you have to eliminate the institutions, as Noam Chomsky wisely cautions.

Thank you”

NOTE: SGW wishes to thank publicly MEP Sakorafa and her staff for the flawless organisation of the event and the full freedom of actions and speech at the time of the preparation and during our visit which recognises in practice the repeatly expressed political independence of our Initiative.

Photos form the working group meeting and the Press Conference:

Case was scheduled to be heard at 9 a.m. on Monday 2^nd January. Court procedures in Greece are open to everyone, but when we tried to enter the building we were intercepted by the police. When councilor Theodoropoulos, an Athens lawyer acting on behalf of the plaintiffs, asked the Judge why people were not allowed to attend he received the answer that the Judge had not given such an order! If not he, then who gave it? We did not find out!

We waited outside the building in low temperatures: obviously public attendance of Court sessions (whatsmore in cases that have a strong impact on public interests, as is the giving away of € 40 m. of EYDAP’s reserves) is not a priority in today’s Greece.

The case was heard in the presence of EYDAP’s Head of Legal Services and a private practicing lawyer (despite EYDAP having its own such Service), a representative of Piraeus Bank (responsible for the transfer of the sums to the shareholders) and representatives of the Greek State and HRADF.

We were told that the decision would be made public at 12 noon: instead we waited until well past 1430 to hear that Injunction has been denied. The case (on which the petition for injunction was based) will be heard on March 20^th, which means that the shareholders will most probably have received their dividends by then.

The text of the Petition can be found in Greek at the SEKES webpage.

(Photos and videos are available in the greek version of this post).

Lots of Greek households (much more than in the past) are unable to pay their water and sewerage bills: state owned and run EYDAP has cut water supply to many of these, thus denying them their human right to water (as recognized by the UN Assembly). EYDAP, instead of supporting such clients decided to give its shareholders a Christmas gift of € 40 m. One of the beneficiaries is the infamous John Paulson, a billionaire that may be (co)-responsible for the real-estate bubble in the US.

At the shareholders meeting George Sinioris, president of OME – EYDAP (EYDAP Federation of Employees’ Unions), explained why and how such an action may prove destructive for the company’s investment program and its financial independence; he also pleaded that EYDAP should act in a more humanitarian and socially-oriented way, which, constitutes its statutory obligation. The shareholders denied any discussion on the issue. The shareholders also refrained from voting on an alternate use of this sum, submitted by SEKES, which (use) would allow both the unhindered continuation of the company’s investment programme as well as the subsidizing of those clients who, because of the crisis raging in Greece during the last eight years, are unable pay their bills. In addition, SEKES proposal asked for the re-establishment of public faucets, that existed some time ago but are nowadays nowhere to be seen.

The shareholders’ meeting took place in the premises of the Athens Stock Market (instead of the EYDAP premises), that were surrounded by several platoons of Riot-Police, arrayed there in order to deny entrance to workers and citizens (among them members of SAVEGREEKWATER) that, despite the strong cold, had gathered there to protest against this evaporation of € 40 m. of, actually if not formally, public money. Despite the cold and the rain the police denied entrance even to the yard to anyone not allowed to the meeting.

The shareholders’ decision acts definitely against the public interest and proves that EYDAP has already actually become a prey for those wishing to obtain swift and guaranteed profits, even before its management gets transferred to HCAP as it has been voted in September 30 2016..

Giving away € 40 m., after having lost another € 17 m. through a so called investment in Attica Bank’s capital increase (€ 20 m. of the EYDAP reserves have been thrown away to this purpose) is a strong reason why public control of EYDAP (and of course all other public services institutions) is long due. Such profit-only oriented management of public services companies, that has been condemned through Decision 1906/2014 of the Greek Council of State, is only one item in a long list of actions and omissions by the Greek Governments and other state services and institutions that have led to Human Rights having become a phrase without any meaning in today’s Greece.

We demand that every competent authority (from the Greek Prime Minister down) make public any and all items, discussions and resolutions that can throw a light on how such decision was decided upon and also whether it constitutes one of the obligations undertaken to Greece’s creditors. Greek citizens have the right to know and comment upon any decision taken on their behalf: decisions reached behind closed doors have no place in a country that calls itself democratic.

We stay, of course, completely and absolutely against the above shareholders’ decision: as citizens of an EU country and as users of EYDAP’s services we will continue our campaign for Water to become, formally and actually, a human right and a public good whose management is subject to the citizens’ control.

SAVEGREEKWATER – a Citizens’ Initiative for the Non-Privatization of Water

This is what is the article:

 It is well known now that EYDAP and EYATH assets have been and are to be transferred to the Superfund:  accordingly the water of the two major urban centers of the country is in danger of becoming prey in the clutches of “water barons”. Obviously, by controlling water services a greater degree of dependency, impoverishment and actual enslavement of people can be achieved.

But what is exactly happening with the waters in Greece outside the two major urban centres?

Water services in the provinces  are run by municipal enterprises, known by the general acronym DEYA. These enterprises are of contributory, self-funded character and are supervised by the corresponding municipalities of their regions of operations. DEYA enterprises were established in 1980, in order to take responsibility of water supply and sewage in remote regions off the central government; their role in local communities has been proved particularly important. They operated as pillars of the development of the aforementioned regions, by the employment (at an astonishing – 95% – absorption rate) of large funds from European investment programs. They also contributed significantly to the environmental protection, by the installation and operation of 250 wastewater treatment facilities. They are responsible for water supply and sewage of distant, sparsely populated, poor areas, ignoring the cost-benefit balance. They are, also, structures that defend public health by ensuring water supplies of excellent characteristics. Overall, they are local enterprises with a humanitarian attitude, having institutionalized social tariffs for vulnerable groups, thus ensuring for them the right to life. As the type of water management (tariffs – quality – social policy) which the mayors adopt can be a crucial factor for their re-election, there exists always a social control which can enforce democracy to the management.  Finally, they are small or medium sized businesses (132 in total, employing 4500 workers), which provide water and sewage to the most beautiful locations of Greece, by protecting their natural wealth, as well as the largest water reserves in the country.

In the post-memoranda Greece of the last six years, the DEYA enterprises have been devalued, under the pretext of limiting fiscal deficit. Nowadays they are becoming under staffed, sold by the day, piece-by-piece at the same time outsourcing important services to private contractors (as for example water treatment facilities, breakdown recovery services, water consumption measurements services, accounting). Due to this costs rise while the quality of services decays.

What is more important (and dangerous) is that due to recent policies an enterprise can be declared unsustainable if it presents negative balance sheets in three continuous years: in such a case a simple majority of the municipal council suffices for the transfer of the enterprise even without compensation. The question reasonably arises how long will a DEYA be sustainable, when operating exclusively with contractors? Should DEYA stop the water and sewage services to distant, sparsely populated villages, as such services are definitely not profitable? Will the privatization of EYDAP work as a Trojan horse for further privatization of the DEYA enterprises? Of course DEYAs are not financially dependent on the State/Central Government therefore they do not, in any way whatsoever, contribute to the public debt; they are financed by citizens and therefore they belong to them; however they are equally restricted in (actually barred from) recruiting any new personnel, which means that over time their already limited resources will reach zero.

What is not known in urban centers is that, on the pretext of water resources protection, all traditional and modern wells in the province, even handheld pumps of house yards (under the threat of 2000 euro fine) have to be filed with the central authorities. Rainwater storage tanks kept by farmers have been banned. Farmers are mandated to install water meters in line shafts’ sections of their fields.

The imposition of the environmental fee which will apply from 2017 and on (on the pretext of “protection of water resources”),will apply to urban-, rural-, and any other water use that can be priced, therefore be bought and sold, or disposed for a price.

As a conclusion I think we should all realize the dangers looming over the waters of the whole country (urban, rural, water resources) and form a common front of resistance to that. United and determined to oppose global capitals, for which human life has no value.

Because, fighting for water is a struggle for life and democracy.

Stavroula Symeonidou

Board Member of the Pan-hellenic Federation of DEYA Workers

President of the Union of Workers at DEYA of the City of Drama

As per a draft of the Bill the Egyptian Water Regulatory Authority (EWRA) will be responsible for (a) ensuring competitiveness and (b) setting prices, while the government will have the final say on the tariff the consumers will pay: if such tariff is lower than the price set by EWRA the Government will cover the difference. Some two years ago the Egyptian Government reduced water subsidies; one fears that such subsidies will be further reduced or even dropped altogether, a victim of the financial consolidation process Egypt is currently undergoing.

One of course wonders how does this procedure ensure or encourage competition: apart from the fact that Water Regulatory Authorities cannot guarantee that consumers will receive the best services possible, the example of England shows that they are also prone to easily submit to most of the private sector’s demands; furthermore though the Egyptian State (by undertaking to subsidize the difference) clearly recognizes that water services and prices cannot be left to be determined by the market it allows is the market to have a say in such. Is this simply a contradiction or is it actually hypocrisy?

The dangers of privatizing directly or indirectly water and sanitation services have already many times been made public; no government, no public authority can claim it does not know the consequences of allowing private business a hand or a say in the sector. The main problem however waits in the day after when “mistakes” are finally officially recognized as such and the people are called upon to pay in order to get their water services back.

SGW will follow the issue of water services privatization in Egypt and come back when more is available

Introduction: A Human Right to Water and Sanitation Toolkit for Global Water Justice Activists

By Meera Karunananthan

The global water justice movement has distinguished itself from conservationist organizations and traditional human rights advocacy groups by focusing on systemic injustices related to the use, distribution and control of freshwater supplies. Global water justice groups are not only concerned with access to drinking water and sanitation services, but also with the questions of who controls and owns our water, who defines policies related to freshwater and how priorities are determined when it comes to access. They have challenged the ways in which the neoliberal economic model has sought to answer these questions, calling instead for a water justice approach based on common ownership, collective control, equitable access and sustainable use to preserve healthy watersheds for future generations.

Over the past two decades the struggle for water justice has been linked with campaigns for formal recognition of the human right to water and sanitation, which has prompted some debate about the value of human rights instruments in addressing root causes of injustices arising from free-market policies.

This project is an attempt to bridge the gaps between human-rights based campaigns and water justice ethics by demonstrating how human rights campaigns can effectively challenge neoliberal policies pertaining to the control, use and distribution of freshwater. It is the result of discussions between grassroots activists, water justice organizations and legal scholars to provide information that would support the creation of human rights to water and sanitation policies. It is our hope that these policies will empower frontline communities and grassroots groups in their efforts to stop the corporate takeover of water, whether in the form of privatization of water and sanitation services, the use of lakes and rivers as dumpsites for extractive industries, or over-extraction by beverage companies.

Not only does this set of educational tools provide information to support campaigns for universal access to sufficient, safe, affordable, accessible and acceptable drinking water and sanitation services, it recognizes that that the protection of watersheds for future generations, the equitable distribution and democratic control of scarce freshwater supplies and essential services are integral to the achievement of universal access. The resources contained in this toolkit acknowledge and aim to challenge the threats posed by the neoliberal economic model to the full and universal realization of the human rights to water and sanitation.

The resources contained in this guide are drawn from successful local and national campaigns to articulate a vision for the human right to water that will empower local communities to defend their rights to water and sanitation against the growing threats of neoliberalization through austerity measures, development loan conditions, trade agreements and investment treaties.

They include:

1. A Water Justice Vision for the Normative Content and Principles of the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation:
   This section draws from international examples and case law to demonstrate how the normative content and principles of the human right to water and sanitation can support campaigns for equitable access, sustainable use and collective control.

2. The Freshwater Commons and the Public Trust Doctrine
   This report explains how an important principle existing within various legal systems can support campaigns to enshrine elements of the human rights to water and sanitation

3. The Uruguayan Model: Protecting the human right to water and sanitation by banning privatization
   Given the growing list of human rights violations resulting from the privatization of water and sanitation services, this portion of the toolkit draws on the Uruguayan example to argue that the human rights to water and sanitation can be codified in a manner that prohibits private sector participation

4. Fighting the Dispossession of Peasants and Rural Communities
   This section draws from key policy initiatives and the local and international level to expand the definition and applications of the human rights to water and sanitation to include access to water for food production, public participation in decision-making and healthy environments through collective control of freshwater supplies, to fight the marginalization of rural communities.

Contributors to the Water Policy module

Meera Karunananthan is the international water campaigner for the Blue Planet Project. The Blue Planet Project is an international project that works with communities and organizations around the world to defend the water commons and promote the human rights to water and sanitation. Meera completed a Master’s thesis examining the corporate appropriation of right to water discourse and its impact on public policy and is currently pursuing a PhD in geography at the University of Ottawa.

Luis Francisco López Guzmán is an environmental lawyer with a master’s degree in environmental law. He is a PhD candidate currently working as the Director of Health Regulation and Legislation in the Ministry of Health and is affiliated with the Salvadoran environmental NGO UNES. He previously served as head of the policy team responsible for drafting El Salvador’s General Water Bill, the Legal framework on Continental Waters and Aquifers, the constitutional reform on the Human Right to Water and the Treaty on Integrated and Sustainable Water Resource Management dealing with transboundary waters shared by Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Adriana Marquisio is the Head of the Department of international and national solidarity at Urguay’s public water utility, OSE. As a fourth generation water worker in her family, Adriana Marquisio has worked at OSE since 1984. She is a co-founder of the Uruguayan water justice network (Comisión en Defensa del Agua y la Vida) and a co-founder of the water justice network of the Americas, la Red Vida. She served as Vice-President of the water workers union, FFOSE from 2003 to 2005 and Vice-President of Federation of public workers from 2009 to 2011. She has been involved in several global water justice initiatives including the Platform for public-public and public-community partnerships and the Blue October initiative.

James Olson is a Michigan-based lawyer who has represented citizens and communities in cases involving public trust, water and other environmental issues. He is the founder and President of FLOW (Flow for Love of Water), a Great Lakes Water Policy Center. He has written books and articles, and lectured widely on environmental, land use, water, and public trust law for over 40 years. He also teaches at the Great Lakes Water Studies Institute, Northwestern Michigan College. He has appeared in the films “FLOW For Love of Water” and “Blue Gold.” He has received many awards, including Michigan Lawyers’ Weekly Lawyer of the Year and the State Bar of Michigan Champion of Justice.

Robert Ramsay is the Senior Research Officer for the Municipal Sector at the Canadian Union of Public Employees in Ottawa. Prior to this, he worked in research, collective bargaining, and campaigns at the Canadian Association of University Teachers. Robert has graduate degrees in Urban Geography and Communications. He has worked internationally in labour and education, and remains active in social justice work both in Canada and in his native United States.

Britton Schwartz is a clinical fellow and supervising attorney at the Berkeley Law Environmental Law Clinic. The clinic engages students in policymaking, litigation and legislation related to local and global environmental issues with a particular focus on the overlap between environmental protection and social justice. Prior to joining the clinic, Britton helped develop and run the International Human Rights Clinic at Santa Clara University’s School of Law. Her work has focused on environmental justice challenges facing low-income and homeless communities of color and indigenous peoples in the United States and Latin America, with an emphasis on the human rights to water and sanitation.

Great  news from Barcelona! For the first time, a large majority of the Barcelona City Council supports ending the private management of water in the city. Barcelona En Comú believes that water is a human right, a basic service and a common good that should be under public, democratic control. Barcelona En Comú’s motion to remunicipalize the city’s water service has been supported by an absolute majority of the City Council

On Friday, November 25th, Barcelona En Comu presented a motion to take back direct public management of the water cycle, one of the main promises of our manifesto. This proposal was also one of the most popular among citizens in the participatory process carried out to define the Municipal Action Plan (the plan that guides city policy).

All the leftist groups of the Barcelona City Council voted in favor of the motion, meaning that the government can move forward with its plan to remunicipalize the water service in the metropolitan area. The water service is currently in the hands of the mixed society that controls distribution in the 23 municipalities of the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (AMB), of which Agbar is the majority shareholder. The council also approved a similar motion by the CUP Barcelona.

Eloi Badia, Councilor for Presidency, Water and Energy, said that “today an absolute majority has voted more transparency, higher service quality, and lower tariffs. Today is a historic moment because a majority of the council has said that things must change.”

Savings for the city and savings for citizens

According to data from the Court of Auditors, public management is 18% cheaper and results in losses that are 23% lower and investments that are 18% higher. A comparison of water tariffs in Catalan municipalities indicates that private management is 25% more expensive than public management.

These savings would obviously mean a reduction in tariffs. Badia has said that water bills could be reduced by at least 10%, 38.7 million euros in total. 29M € could be saved from industry profits and 9.7M € from the knowledge levy. “The best social rate is one that does not include unnecessary expenses. We must respond to neighbors who can not face bills that have risen 85% in the last 10 years,” he added.

This process is based on precedents in large cities such as Paris, Berlin and Naples that have demonstrated the advantages of having a service under 100% public management, as well as in Catalan towns such as Arenys de Munt and Montornès del Vallès.

This is the beginning of a path that can be long and complex. Barcelona En Comú will continue to work for public services and the common good of all citizens.

The article that was added to the Constitution is the following:

Article 70a (Right to drinking water)
Everyone has the right to drinking water.
Water sources are public good managed by the state.
Water resources serve primarily as the sustainable supply of drinking water and water for households and in this part are not treated as a commodity that can be traded with.
Drinking water supplied to the public and to households is provided by the state through local communities direct and non-profit.

“From the 30th January 2016 to 11th March, we have collected a list of more than 51,000 signatures in support of having the inalienable right to water written into the Constitution. We handed this list to the National Assembly on 11th March. Our Citizens initiative therefore has to this date the backing of almost 3 percent of the voting population. Even after handing in the petition signatures, we have continued our efforts by working on a positive pressure and discussing the matter with water and legal professionals. We have also engaged public authorities covering the area of water, political parties and representatives of citizen initiatives in an open discussion. The objective of our actions was to be clearly written into the Constitution that water and water land is a natural public good, over which no-one can acquire ownership rights; that everyone has the right to drinking water; that the water supply of the population cannot be owned by private companies in any legal-formal way, and that the provision of the water supply to the public is a service which should not generate profit and that the water supply of the population has the absolute precedence over economic exploitation in the case of the water crisis or drought or other crises, and that the water resources be managed sustainably, with thoughts on our posterity.By written down unalienable right to drinking water into the Constitution we are thinking about the future in the present, we will show Europe and the world that Slovenian drinking water is a public good that cannot and will not be privatized and should permanently and primarily be used to supply the population (and animals) and only after that for economic purposes in Slovenia and export purposes, provided the water supply allows for it” writes the announcement by the activists of “Civil initiative For Slovenia and freedom, Water into the Constitution, water into the conscience”

Last night the Parliament held the voting. With 64 votes in favour and none against, the 90-seat parliament added an article to the EU country’s constitution saying “everyone has the right to drinkable water”. The centre-right opposition Slovenian Democratic party (SDS) abstained from the vote saying the amendment was not necessary and only aimed at increasing public support. Slovenia is a mountainous, water-rich country with more than half its territory covered by forest. “Water resources represent a public good that is managed by the state. Water resources are primary and durably used to supply citizens with potable water and households with water and, in this sense, are not a market commodity,” the article reads.

The centre-left prime minister, Miro Cerar, had urged lawmakers to pass the bill saying the country of two million people should “protect water – the 21st century’s liquid gold – at the highest legal level”. “Slovenian water has very good quality and, because of its value, in the future it will certainly be the target of foreign countries and international corporations’ appetites.“As it will gradually become a more valuable commodity in the future, pressure over it will increase and we must not give in,” Cerar said.

Slovenia is the first European Union country to include the right to water in its constitution, although according to Rampedre (the online Permanent World Report on the Right to Water) 15 other countries across the world had already done so.

Trade Unions and Civil Society Welcome the Introduction of the Human Right to Water into the Constitution of Slovenia

Joint Press Release by EPSU, Food & Water Europe and European Water Movement*:

Last night the National Assembly of Slovenia passed an amendment to its Constitution to include a new article that recognizes the Human Right to Water. The amendment affirms water should be treated as a public good managed by the state, not as a commodity, and that drinking water must be supplied by the public sector in a non-for-profit basis. It is a great success for Slovenian activists and people.

“Citizens from across the EU and Europe have successfully mobilized to have the right to water and sanitation recognized as a human right – as decided by the United Nations – and have this put into EU law. The European Commission continues to ignore nearly two million voices of the first ever successful European Citizens Initiative. Commissioner Vella should listen to citizens and follow the Slovenian example as soon as possible,” said Jan Willem Goudriaan, EPSU General Secretary.

Water is a controversial topic in Slovenia, as foreign companies from the food and beverage industry are buying rights to a large amount of local water resources. The Slovenian government has raised concerns about the impacts of free trade agreements like CETA in its capacity to control and regulate these resources [1].

“Trade agreements and investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms can limit the ability of states to take back public control over water resources when foreign investors are involved, as it is the case in Slovenia. To guarantee the right to water and the control over this key resource, the European and the Slovenian Parliaments should reject CETA when it comes to a vote in the coming months,” said David Sánchez, Director of Food & Water Europe.

The amendment is the result of a citizens’ initiative that collected 51.000 signatures to propose a constitutional amendment [2].

“We welcome the introduction of the human right to water in the Slovenian constitution, as the great result of a citizens’ initiative. Now civil society should be vigilant to guarantee a democratic and transparent management of the integrated water cycle founded in the participation of citizens and workers,” said Jutta Schütz, speakperson at the European Water Movement.

• SAVEGREEKWATER is a member of the European Water Movement since 2012.

——

Notes

[1] The Slovenian government raised concerns about the ambiguity of terms like “commercial use of a water source” in CETA, how the agreement applies to existing water rights and the future ability of national governments to put limits on concessions already granted without being subject to claim under ICS, among others. The document can be found here
https://europeanwater.org/images/pdf/Slovenia-questions-on-Water_14-9-2016.pdf

[2] More information about this citizen’s initiative can be found at their website
https://voda.svoboda.si/

Contact:

Jutta Schütz, Speakperson, European Water Movement, +49 (0) 157 390 808 39 (mobile), juttaschuetz(at)gmx.de

David Sánchez, Director, Food & Water Europe, +32 (0) 2893 1045 (land), +32 (0) 485 842 604 (mobile), dsanchez(at)fweurope.org

Guillaume Durivaux, Policy officer, EPSU, +32 (0) 22501041, gdurivaux(at)epsu.org

PDF file of this press release
European Public Service Union – Food & Water Europe – European Water Movement

Here is the article:

THIS SUMMER, 81,000 homes in Pittsburgh received a worrisome letter about their water. The local utility “has found elevated levels of lead in tap water samples in some homes,” it said. Seventeen percent of samples had high levels of the metal, which can cause “serious health problems.”

The situation was bad enough to attract the attention of Marc Edwards, the Virginia Tech professor who helped expose the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. “The levels in Pittsburgh are comparable to those reported in Flint,” he said in an interview with local TV station WPXI.

This was surprising because until this year, Pittsburgh’s lead levels had always been normal. So what happened?

First, a bit of background: In 2012, the city faced a dilemma. Though it had clean water, its century-old water system desperately needed repair. And its utility, Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority, was plagued by administrative problems. Residents complained of bad customer service and unfair fees. And after a series of poor financial decisions in the 2000s, PWSA was hundreds of millions of dollars in debt.

Pittsburgh isn’t alone: Public utilities around the country are trying to make ends meet with dwindling public funding and increasingly outdated infrastructure. Many, like Pittsburgh, turn to private management companies to help out.

Pittsburgh’s utility called in Veolia, a Paris-based company that consults with utilities, promising “customized, cost-effective solutions that reflect best practices, environmental protection and a better quality of life.” Veolia consults or manages water, waste, and energy systems in 530 cities in North America, with recent contracts in New York City, New Orleans, and Washington, DC. Last year, the company, which operates in 68 countries, brought in about $27 billion in revenue.

Pittsburgh hired Veolia to manage day-to-day operations and provide an interim executive team, helping the utility run more efficiently and save precious public dollars. Under the terms of the contract, Veolia would keep roughly half of every dollar the utility saved under its guidance.

Under the leadership of Jim Good, a Veolia executive serving as interim director, PWSA began making sweeping changes—and they seemed to be working: Within a year, call waiting times for concerned customers dropped by 50 percent. Thanks to new fees for commercial buildings, new customers, and other assorted changes, the utility saved $2 million.

According to a 2013 article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Veolia changed PWSA’s culture, too: Instead of traditional top-heavy management, Good checked in with employees over pizza and burgers every week. At a staff barbecue in 2012, “I told them that we were there to work with the employees as their partners,” he later told the Post-Gazette. “I provided assurances that there wouldn’t be any layoffs and that together we could achieve anything.”

But by the end of 2015, the utility had laid off or fired 23 people—including the safety and water quality managers, and the heads of finance and engineering, according to documents obtained through a Right-to-Know request. The PWSA laboratory staff, which was responsible for testing water quality throughout the 100,000-customer system, was cut in half. Stanley States, a water quality director with 36 years of experience at the utility (employees referred to him as “Dr. Water”) was transferred to an office-based job in the research department. Frustrated with the move, he retired.

Good maintains that not all staffing decisions were made by Veolia, which was in a consulting rather than management role when the layoffs occurred. Any suggested staffing changes had to be approved by the board, he said.

As the lab staff shrank, PWSA made major changes to its water treatment system. For decades, the city had been adding soda ash—a chemical similar to baking soda—to its water to prevent the pipes, many of which are lead, from corroding and leaching into the water. (Lack of corrosion controls caused lead to leach into the water in Flint.) In 2014, PWSA hastily replaced soda ash with another cheaper corrosion control treatment, caustic soda. Such a change typically requires a lengthy testing and authorization process with the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, but the DEP was never informed of the change. Nearly two years later, as news spread about the disaster in Flint, the utility switched back to soda ash.

Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto puts the blame for the treatment change squarely on Veolia, saying the company never informed the utility’s board or the city. Veolia denies responsibility for the change, saying it “did not and would not prioritize cost savings ahead of effective corrosion control methods or water quality.”

What is certain is that this spring, the state’s DEP cited the utility for breaking state law and ordered immediate lead testing.

Tests this summer—the first since 2013—found that the city’s lead levels had crept up and, for the first time on record, exceed federal standards. Seventeen percent of homes had levels above the Environmental Protection Agency’s action level of 15 parts per billion.

Many suspect that the change in water treatment chemicals led to the jump in lead levels; the city is currently conducting an internal investigation into the matter.

Stanley States, the former water quality director, believes the staff cuts almost certainly played a role. Lead levels first crept up in 2013 because of a previous change in treatment chemicals, though they didn’t exceed federal standards. But without a fully staffed lab, says States, the matter wasn’t addressed. “They cut our laboratory in half,” he said. “We would have been researching like crazy this lead corrosion problem to see how to correct it.”

But Pittsburgh citizens’ complaints about Pittsburgh’s water goes beyond quality—it’s also extraordinarily expensive. In 2013, a year after Veolia was hired, the water board approved a 20 percent rate increase over four years; by 2017, the average residential water bill will be $50 per month—triple the average Midwest cost, according to the Guardian.

Soon after, customers began complaining that their bills were coming erratically and appeared to charge for water residents hadn’t used. One vacant property owner was charged for using 132,000 gallons of water in one month—that’s about how much a family of four uses in a year. “You don’t know if it’s going to come in, whether it’s late or not, how much it will be, a Pittsburgh retiree told Truthout. “Then you get it and there’s a late charge.”

In May of 2015, a group of Pittsburgh customers filed a class-action lawsuit against the utility, Veolia North America Water, and the accounting company keeping track of PWSA bills, alleging that new water meter readers installed in 2013 “catastrophically failed and customers have received grossly inaccurate and at times outrageously high bills”—including increases of nearly 600 percent. “PWSA is acutely aware that the billings are wrong but do not hesitate for a moment to issue ‘shut off’ notices and then arbitrarily turn off water service,” read the complaint. PWSA and Veolia declined to respond to the allegations.

Last December, facing the class-action lawsuit, a state citation for changing corrosion controls, and mounting debt, Pittsburgh terminated its contract with Veolia. All told, PWSA had paid Veolia $11 million over the course of the contract.

Earlier this month, the utility announced it was suing the company. According to a press release, Veolia “grossly mismanaged PWSA’s operations, abused its positions of special trust and confidence, and misled and deceived PWSA as part of its efforts to maximize profits for itself to the unfair detriment of PWSA and its customers.”

Pittsburgh isn’t the first municipality to sue Veolia this year. In April, Massachusetts officials sued Veolia, which was managing Plymouth’s sewage treatment facility, for allowing 10 million gallons of untreated sewage to spill in and around the town’s harbor last winter.

Two months later, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette charged Veolia with fraud and negligence for failing to discover Flint’s enduring lead contamination problem after the city hired the company in 2015 to consult on water quality.

“Veolia stated that the water, quote, was safe,” Schuette told NPR. “Veolia also callously and fraudulently dismissed medical and health concerns by stating that, quote, some people may be sensitive to any water.”

In many cases, critics point to a pattern of Veolia saving utilities money through quick fixes—while ignoring bigger problems. In a phone interview, Kevin Acklin, the chief of staff for Pittsburgh’s Mayor Bill Peduto, pointed out that Veolia’s earnings are directly tied to the utility’s short-term savings. “They had the incentive under the contract to not make capital investments in property, planning, and equipment—to basically not fix the pipes when needed, to pass off those costs to other agencies, including the city and private homes,” he alleged. “Ultimately they were fiduciaries for the public authority, but they also served the business needs of a large multinational corporation.”

Veolia denies responsibility in both Plymouth and Flint, saying the leak in Plymouth came from a pipe failure that was out of its control, and that the contract in Flint was limited to looking at another chemical called TTHM.

In the case of Pittsburgh, Veolia maintains that PWSA’s board of directors retained control over the authority over the course of the three-year contract. “Veolia met its obligations and fulfilled the requirements of our contract in a fully transparent manner,” wrote a Veolia North America spokeswoman in an email. “We stand behind the work performed on behalf of PWSA.”

Yet Pittsburgh leaders can’t help but notice that the city’s utility is arguably even worse off than it was when it hired Veolia four years ago, with a depleted bank account—half of all earnings are directed to serving debt—and pipes that are still a century old. “The authority is in a pretty precarious financial situation right now, and I can’t sit here and point to anything tangible to show the positive legacy of the contract we had with Veolia,” says Acklin.

A former PWSA employee was more blunt about it. When asked how to advise utilities considering contracting with Veolia, he warned, “They will come in, rape your water company, and leave with money bags.”

During the secret negotiations of the free trade agreement between the European Union and Canada (known as CETA), the European Commission always maintained that water would be excluded from the treaty, and that the choice on how to manage Services of General Economic Interest (SGEI) related to water (production and distribution of drinking water and sanitation, among others) by the public authorities would not be questioned. But a careful reading of the final text of CETA shows that the reality is different.

Food & Water Europe and the European Water Movement are really concerned about the impact CETA could have in water as a natural resource and in public water management. When one of the key controversies regarding this treaty are its impact on public services, we want to put on the table an analysis of its potential impacts on water, with the hope that it can be useful for activists around Europe campaigning to stop CETA.

The European Citizens Initiative on the Right to Water has been one of the most successful movements in Europe in the last few years. There is a lot of awareness raised about the importance of taking water back to public control, democratizing water management and that water should be a commons, not a commodity. We are sure we can build on that energy to help defeating CETA and other trade agreements, as one of the biggest threats we have seen of water commodification and privatization.

1. Are water and water services included in the treaty?

Yes, in article 1.9, “Rights and Obligations Relating to Water”. The article, written in fuzzy legal terms, states “water in its natural state […] is not a good or a product […] Therefore, only Chapters Twenty-Two (Trade and Sustainable Development) and Twenty-Four (Trade and Environment) apply to such water.” The problem is that almost all water uses (drinking water, sanitation or agricultural irrigation) involve water extracted from its natural environment. It could, therefore, be considered as a good and a product, and could be treated as a commodity and therefore subject to CETA.

The article adds: “Where a Party permits the commercial use of a specific water source, it shall do so in a manner consistent with the Agreement” without clearly defining what is a “commercial use” for water or a “specific water source”, which might open the door to further water commodification for example by influencing how water rights are granted by the authorities. Under CETA, water rights can be turned into “investment” (see question 8).

2. Can CETA increase the pressure to privatize water management?

It could in the case of drinking water provision, and it would definitely do for sanitation.

CETA is the first free trade agreement negotiated by the European Union that includes a negative listing approach to protect public services. Under this approach, everything that is not listed is affected by the treaty (this is known as “list it or lose it”). There are two annexes where you can list exemptions: Annex I, for measures (laws or administrative practices) that violate obligations of the treaty, and Annex II, to include existing and future measures.

Regarding drinking water services, the EU took reservations on “Market Access” and “National Treatment” for “Collection, purification and distribution of water” services, as indicated in Annex II, “Reservations for Future Measures”.

However, only four reservations together: “Market Access”, “National Treatment”, “Most Favoured Nation” and “Performance Requirements” can guarantee that a service will be excluded from CETA’s mechanisms in all cases. For example, the last services proposal from the EU in TTIP[1] includes reservations on “National Treatment”, “Most Favoured-Nation”, “Performance Requirements” and “Senior Management and Board of Directors” for “Collection, purification and distribution of water”. We see no reason why these reservations are needed with the US, but not with Canada.

Also, it should be noted that even if drinking water services are included in Annex II reservations, investment protection applies to them[2].

Regarding sanitation, only Germany can apply a “Market Access” reservation for the services of “Sewage, refuse disposal, and sanitation.” That would imply the inclusion of those services under the CETA framework for the rest of the EU member states, in contradiction with Article 12 of the EU Concessions Directive, which lay down that the Directive shall not apply to concessions awarded to the disposal or treatment of sewage[3].

3. Are water services protected by the horizontal “Public utilities exemption” as claimed by the European Commission?

According to a study commissioned by the European Public Services Union and the Austrian Chamber of Labour[4], there are several challenges in this clause, one of the most important instruments of the EU in the context of trade agreements.

• The model of protection applied by the EU doesn’t include investment protection.
• Terminology is quite ambiguous. Terms like “public utilities” have no specific meaning in international law, and no equivalent term in EU law.

Also, the Public Utilities Clause only protects from “market access” but not from “national treatment”. So foreign companies with subsidiary in Canada must be granted all the rights that domestic companies have as soon as they have a subsidiary in the EU Member state.

The European Commission claims that this model offered “20 years of protection that works”. And it is correct to state that so far trade agreements have not formally prevented Member states from providing public services, like water.

But, following the conclusions of Professor Krajewski, we cannot ignore the regulatory chill effect of these agreements, as governments, when engaging in policy reforms for public services may take their trade obligations into consideration. Also, the fact that there have not been disputes filed in this area doesn’t mean that they won’t happen in the future, as this model has never been put to a real test. This model works since the GATS agreement in 1995, and since then, the EU has signed trade agreements with developing countries and emerging markets (Mexico, Chile, South Korea, Peru…). None of them were significant commercial suppliers of public services with a market access interest in the EU. This is not the case with Canada, and won’t be the case with the US for TTIP.

For sanitation (sewage treatment), there is only a German reservation and the general “Public Utilities Clause” which mentions environmental services, which contain sewage treatment. The question is what happens in this contradictory case where there is a general protection under the “Public Utilities Clause”, while there is a sector-specific liberalisation of the sector “environmental services”. Usually special law is regarded as stronger than the general law.

The German Association of Public Water Operators still find another loophole that could impact both drinking water and sanitation services, as this would be the first time this “Public Utilities” clause would be put in the framework of a negative list agreement.[5]

4. Can CETA be a problem for public authorities to return water management of water and sanitation services into public control?

Yes, with three main concerns, regulatory cooperation, the ratchet effect and investor-state arbitration (known as ISDS or more recently under the name of ICS).

There is a regulatory cooperation mechanism in CETA, and in other free trade agreements. Regulatory cooperation offers a framework for analysis of current and future legislation in terms of their impact on trade and investment. For example, transnational companies could give their negative opinion to any progressive legislative reform that could impact their interests. Linked to the risk of being taken to a private investment tribunal (ISDS/ICS), regulatory cooperation could block the debate and approval of legislation and measures of general interest in the field of public services, human rights and water rights abstraction, and even to weaken current legislation.

Under these free trade agreements, once a sector is liberalised and not listed in Annex II, there is no way back (this is known as ratchet mechanism). Changes are allowed only if they are less restrictive than the measure listed. We have examples of this ratchet effect in other free trade agreements such as NAFTA. Notable is that the European Parliament has rejected such ratchet mechanism in its resolution regarding TiSA[6].

Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) is one of the most worrying aspects of this latest wave of trade agreements. Under this mechanism, foreign companies can use private tribunals to sue governments if they deem that their profits or investment potentials are being affected by new laws or changes in policy. ISDS gives companies the power to contest — and potentially reverse — government decisions, and to seek compensation, possibly in millions of Euros. Although in the last version of CETA there is a reformed version called ICS, analysis have shown that the worst effects remain the same[7].

Several cases, like the Argentinian ones mentioned in question 5 show how when a public authority take back water management under public control, even after a breach of the contract from the company side, the company can go to private arbitration to get a compensation.

5. Are there ISDS cases so far that affected water and water management?

There are several cases in which public authorities have been taken to private arbitration tribunals by companies for water-related disputes.

Argentina, for example, has lost three cases against international investors when the country sought to take back water companies into public hands. Argentina had to pay $105 million to Vivendi (now Veolia) after authorities terminated Vivendi’s contract to supply water to Tucumán province when the company increased water rates by 104% and failed to invest adequately in the system, resulting in low water quality[8]. Argentina also lost a case against Azurix (an Enron subsidiary) and had to pay the company $165 million when a water workers’ co-operative took over drinking and wastewater services in Buenos Aires Province after the company withdrew from the contract[9]. Argentina lost a third case against Suez, AGBAR and Vivendi after the city of Buenos Aires opted to remunicipalise its water company because of concerns about water quality, lack of wastewater treatment and mounting tariffs[10].

Actually, just a simple disagreement on tariff increases has been reason enough for a company to take a government to court. The private water company in Tallin (Estonia), Tallinna Vesi, brought a claim against the Estonian government using a bilateral investment treaty (BIT). Tallina Vesi is owned by United Utilities, a UK company registered in the Netherlands. They used a bilateral investment treaty between Estonia and The Netherlands to bring a claim against the Estonian government. The company claims that Estonia breached the “fair and equitable treatment” standard of the BIT in refusing to allow the company to increase tariffs, and ask for 90 million for projected total losses over the lifetime of the contract[11].

6. Could CETA be a problem for current public water public companies?

Utility companies, like the Stadtwerke Karlsruhe, a mostly municipally-owned utility company in that German city, consider it could be[12].

According to their analysis, in CETA water rights are generally treated as investments, and would therefore be subject to the investment protection of CETA, which would grant extra rights to foreign investors, unlike investors just operating domestically like Stadwerke Karlsruhe. Problems could start as soon as a foreign investor starts competing for a specific ground water source which is already used by them (a scenario they consider quite realistic). Another potential conflict would be on protection zones, if a foreign investor regarded its own investment inside that zone. Problems might also arise as Stadtwerke Karsruhe needs to follow CETA procurement law, because investment protection in CETA would allow unsuccessful tenderers to invoke extra investment protection standards.

The Association of German Public Water Companies goes beyond[13]. According to their analysis, the reservations applied by the EU to “Collection, purification and distribution of water” don’t cover all their activities, present and future. Because of the negative list approach in CETA, it doesn’t protect their capacity to develop activities like increasing their energy self-sufficiency or recovering and reusing materials inside sewage water. These activities are included under German law as new targets for water provision. Under the framework of CETA, public water operators would need to open these activities to the market and to foreign investors.

This association also complains that the water legislation in the EU and member states has not been listed in annex I, which could mean that current measures and regulations to provide a public water management could be put into question. They also fear that the Public Procurement chapter would limit their ability to work with other municipalities in a cooperative, and not competitive way. CETA’s lack of precautionary principle approach, which is an inherent component in EU law and the cooperatory regulation, which possibly could exert influence on decisions of the parliaments in the EU and EU member states, is another concern regarding health, environment and water resources protection.

7. Main private water companies are European, it this not more a problem for the Canadian side?

Yes, it is a problem for Canadian public water systems. But Canadian and European companies in the water sector are subsidiaries of the same multinational companies (such as Veolia, Nestlé, Suez or Coca-Cola). CETA, or TTIP, would offer these multinationals a great opportunity to get their hands on water and water-related services, to the detriment of people living on both sides of the Atlantic.

CETA would grant special rights to foreign company and investors, but not only from Canada. For example, of the 51,495 US-owned subsidiaries currently operating in EU member states, 41,811 are owned by US parent companies that also have subsidiaries in Canada[14]. Any of these firms could be used as the basis for an ICS case. That could also work the other way, through European-owned companies with subsidiaries in the US or Canada.

A clear example of how ISDS/ICS works beyond any borders is the Estonian case mentioned above, in which a UK company operating in Estonia used its Dutch subsidiary to take the Estonian government into private arbitration using a bilateral investment agreement between the Netherlands and Estonia.

8. Can CETA impact water as a natural resource, and its different uses in agriculture and industry?

There is a shared fear that CETA would further push for a corporate water grabbing in Europe and a further water commodification.

On one hand, article 1.9 states “Where a Party permits the commercial use of a specific water source, it shall do so in a manner consistent with the Agreement” without clearly defining what is a “commercial use” for water or a “specific water source.” If we take into account CETA’s definition of investment on page 39, it includes “Forms that an investment may take include:” (…) “an interest arising from:” (…) “a concession conferred pursuant to the law of a Party or under a contract, including to search for, cultivate, extract or exploit natural resources”.

It is hard to predict consequences of these provisions, but it subjects water rights to CETA trade and investment rules. Especially the extra investment protection standards (“fair and equitable treatment” and “indirect Expropriation”) for foreign investors could have a strong influence on the way water rights are granted by authorities and limit their possibilities to deny water rights once they have been granted to foreign investors. This could open the door to an indirect form of water grabbing. There are several cases of investment protection in other treaties (NAFTA, Energy Charta) where water rights have been issue of an investor-state-dispute. They have resulted in a settlement in favour of the suing company[15].

There are no proper protection for water rights in CETA (understanding by water rights the right to extract or divert water, the right to use water or water taking permits) where there is commercial use. That would heavily impact European agriculture and many industries. Under these conditions there is no other way to read article 1.9 as anything but one additional tool to move towards an increased water commodification.

It wouldn’t be the first time that the European Commission tries to introduce market mechanisms in water policy[16]. For many years they have been pushing for water commodification, through water pricing and water markets. The idea that water rights should become tradable on behalf of economic efficiency is a neoliberal mantra that finds echo in many European institutions[17], and has been experienced in Spain, Australia or California.

Currently it is up to Member States in Europe to allocate water abstraction rights and they do so by different criteria, but not with criteria based on trade and investment that can be found in free trade agreements. But if water rights are tradable, regulation over this trade falls under CETA. While the State might keep the ownership and manage the allocation, water rights would be freely tradable with no further public intervention beyond, perhaps, a market regulator.

NOTE: The term “concession” in the EU is referring to something much more specific, it is a “services concession” for being allowed to supply a city with water. Water rights are something separate and refer to water resources as such – no matter if for public, non-profit, commercial, private purposes.

——-

[1] European Commission, 2015. Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Services and Investment Offer of the European Union

[2] Krajewski, Markus, 2016. Model Clauses for the Exclusion of Public Services from Trade and Investment Agreements

[3] Directive 2014/23/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 February 2014 on the award of concession contracts

[4] Krajewski, op. cit.

[5] Allianz der öffentlichen Wasserwirtschaft e.V., 2016. Wasserwirtschaft im Sog des Freihandels – CETA

[6] European Parliament resolution of 3 February 2016 containing the European Parliament’s recommendations to the Commission on the negotiations for the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA)

[7] Several authors, 2016. The Zombie ISDS

[8] Environmental Justice Atlas

Several authors, 2007. CIADI: Fallo contra el pueblo de Tucumán

[9] Water Remunicipalisation Tracker

[10] Water Remunicipalisation Tracker

[11] International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes

Kishimoto, S., 2015. Trade Agreements and investor protection: A global threat to public water. In Kishimoto, Lobita et Petitjean, 2015. Our Public Water Future. The Global Experience with Remunicipalisation

[12] Stadtwerke Karlsruhe, 2016. How water supply in Germany would be affected by the EU free trade and investment agreements CETA, TTIP, TiSA

[13] Allianz der öffentlichen Wasserwirtschaft (AöW), 2016. Wasserwirtschaft im Sog des Freihandels – CETA (In German)

A French translation, La gestion des ressources en eau dans le sillage du libre échange – CETA

[14] Public Citizen. Tens of Thousands of U.S. Firms Would Obtain New Powers to Launch Investor-State Attacks Against European Policies via CETA and TTIP

[15] Stadtwerke Karlsruhe, 2016, op. cit.

[16] European Water Movement, 2012. Commission’s Blueprint Puts Water and Nature Up For Sale

[17] See for example the seminar Water Market Scenarios for Europe: A response to Water

The City Council of Tyrnavos, in its 13th meeting (04-10-2016) with its decision, no. 239/2016

DECIDES IN MAJORITY:

The City Council of Tyrnavos is against the commercialization of water and sanitation  services because this is not for the benefit of the public interest.

The council claims that:

-The water is a common that cannot be commercialized.

-The access to the drinking water and the quality of services of water supply and seweage are indisputable rights for all citizens, strongly linked to the right for life, hygiene and human dignity.

–EYDAP must remain a public organization to service the society and it must not be transformed to a means for the profit of private interests.

-Whenever there was an attempt to sell public services of water supplies to private interests ,there was a failure due to dramatic increases of prices and dramatic decrease of water quality and consequently, the return of the water services management to either the municipality or the state became unavoidable.

-Within the framework of the upcoming constitutional revision, the social control and the public sector management of the water should be legally ensured.