NAFTA and European Union: Different sides of the Atlantic but same function

The eurozone, functionally, is much the same as the North American Free Trade Agreement across the Atlantic. NAFTA makes corporate profiteering paramount by eroding the ability of the governments within it to enforce regulations; places decision-making in the hands of unaccountable and undemocratic arbitration boards convened by either the commercial arm of the United Nations or the World Bank; and elevates the interests of large corporations and financiers above all other human considerations.

The key NAFTA provision is Chapter 11, which codifies “equal treatment” in accordance with international law and enables corporations to sue over any regulation or other government act that violates “investor rights,” which means any regulation or act that might prevent the corporation from earning the maximum possible profit. Thus we have had the spectacle of a corporate parcel-delivery service suing Canada in attempt to have the Canadian postal system dismantled and chemical companies suing because a chemical they produce has been banned because it is poisoning water supplies.

Similarly, the financiers who dominate European Union policy are not subject to any democratic accounting, either. And under the rubric of not allowing a perfectly good crisis to go to waste, the ongoing eurozone crisis is being used as leverage to install an ever harsher régime. Doing so is completely logical within the imperial construct of the European Union, which is a supra-national institution to impose corporate domination on a reluctant population. National governments are not insulated from popular opinion, but a supra-national structure can impose dictates on those governments, which can then tell citizens that is has “no choice” but to adhere to them so that the country can remain “part of Europe.”

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