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Dear all,<br>
<br>
Today my organization the EFF has launched an advertising campaign
around trade transparency reforms, which I would like to propose as
a starting point for a document that this Dynamic Coalition could
produce as an output this year.<br>
<br>
The advertisements can be seen in POLITICO's Morning Trade
newsletter at
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-trade/2017/05/nafta-notification-whats-happening-and-when-220315">http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-trade/2017/05/nafta-notification-whats-happening-and-when-220315</a>
(you might need to disable your ad blocker to see the banners, but
there are also text messages in the middle and at the end of the
newsletter). The ads link to this page on EFF's website which
summarizes five recommendations, and the rationales for these:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.eff.org/trade">https://www.eff.org/trade</a>.<br>
<br>
The campaign is targetted at U.S. trade policymakers and is hence
very U.S.-centric (even to the point of sounding a little
jingoistic), and a couple of the recommendations are specific to the
U.S. trade advisory process. Nevertheless, I believe that the core
concepts should find broad agreement amongst members of this Dynamic
Coalition and that we ought to be able to fashion a consensus
document that at least finds inspiration from the five
recommendations made here.<br>
<br>
I won't repeat the complete rationales for the recommendations here
because you can read them for yourselves at
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.eff.org/trade">https://www.eff.org/trade</a>, but the headlines are:<br>
<ol>
<li>Publish U.S. textual proposals on rules in ongoing
international trade negotiations</li>
<li>Publish consolidated texts after each round of ongoing
negotiations</li>
<li>Appoint a "transparency officer" who does not have structural
conflicts of interest in promoting transparency at the agency</li>
<li>Open up textual proposals to a notice and comment and public
hearing process</li>
<li>Make Trade Advisory Committees more broadly inclusive<br>
</li>
</ol>
One of the items in this Dynamic Coalition's 2017 action plan is "To
develop a multi-stakeholder approach to facilitating the
transparency and inclusiveness in international trade negotiations
and the domestic consultation processes". Although that's
open-ended, it could include the development of a consensus document
containing a set of principles that generalises from the above five
recommendations, and that's what I'm proposing. At this point, I am
asking for your feedback on the idea.<br>
<br>
If there is broad agreement on the idea, the next step would be to
form a drafting subcommittee that would propose a strawman text for
further discussion by the full Dynamic Coalition. If you support
the idea of us developing such a document, are you also interested
in being part of the drafting subcommittee?<br>
<br>
Thanks and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the above.<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Jeremy Malcolm
Senior Global Policy Analyst
Electronic Frontier Foundation
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://eff.org">https://eff.org</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:jmalcolm@eff.org">jmalcolm@eff.org</a>
Tel: 415.436.9333 ext 161
:: Defending Your Rights in the Digital World ::
Public key: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.eff.org/files/2016/11/27/key_jmalcolm.txt">https://www.eff.org/files/2016/11/27/key_jmalcolm.txt</a>
PGP fingerprint: 75D2 4C0D 35EA EA2F 8CA8 8F79 4911 EC4A EDDF 1122</pre>
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