Reporters Shut Out of “Secret” Washington Trade Court,
A journalistic outfit that has shed light on a dramatic turn in a multibillion dollar cross-border environmental lawsuit is being shut out of key proceedings that start on Monday in Washington.
Courthouse News had asked the Netherlands-based Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) to attend the roughly three week long “secret tribunal hearings” in a case involving Ecuador and Chevron.
“The Parties to this arbitration have not ‘agreed otherwise’,” Martin Doe, the senior legal counsel for the court replied, referring to dispute settlement transparency rules in a letter. “In the circumstances, there can be no public access to the hearing.”
Noting that some international trade agreements force feuding parties to hold public hearings, Doe pointed out that an open dispute resolution process “is not the position under the USA-Ecuador Bilateral Investment Treaty.”
The Dutch body is involved in the matter “pursuant to the Treaty between the United States of America and the Republic of Ecuador,” according to a statement on its website.
The denial to Courthouse News, who have been supported in their endeavor for sunlight by The Reporters’ Committee for the Freedom of the Press, was the latest flashpoint in increasingly common disputes over how trade agreements are enforced—arguments that are set to spill over onto Capitol Hill in the next few weeks, as Congress considers President Obama’s trade agenda.
snip
“The use of ISDS is on the rise around the globe,” she also noted. “From 1959 to 2002, there were fewer than 100 ISDS claims worldwide. But in 2012 alone, there were 58 cases.”
According to a leaked copy of the draft TPP dated from Jan. 20, the investor-state arbitration panels under the agreement would be forced to “conduct hearings open to the public.” The order, however, notes a major exemption for “information that is designated as protected”–one that could see judges “closing the hearing for the duration of any discussion of such information.”
The Obama administration’s top trade negotiator Michael Froman has acknowledged, without specifying, that “abuses of the investor-State [sic] dispute settlement…have happened under agreements negotiated by other countries.”
The ongoing dust-up between Ecuador and Chevron stems from a 2011 verdict finding the oil conglomerate liable for environmental damages to the tune of $19 billion. In 2013, Ecuador’s Supreme Court reduced that penalty to $9.5 billion.........................................
https://www.districtsentinel.com/reporters-shut-out-of-secret-washington-trade-court-in-chevron-ecuador-case/
= new reply since forum marked as read
