Organisers of the “Right2Water” campaign urged the EU Commission to guarantee access to water and sanitation as a human right, and give a legal undertaking that water services will not be liberalised in the EU, in the first European Parliament debate on a European Citizens’ Initiative in Parliament on Monday. MEPs shared the view that access to water is a basic human right, but some pointed out that rules on providing drinkable water remain the remit of EU member states.

The hearing, organised by the Environment Committee, in association with Development, Internal Market and Petitions committees, brought together representatives of the “Right2Water” Citizens Committee, MEPs and the European Commission, which will draft a response to the initiative by 20 March.

“Parliament recognised that water is a shared resource of humankind and a public good and that access to water should constitute a fundamental and universal right in its the resolution of 3 July 2012 on the implementation of EU water legislation”, but “We need to do more to foster the participation of all actors of our society to make sure that the protection of water resources and of drinking water in particular is reflected into all our policies” said Environment Committee chair Matthias Groote (S&D, DE).

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1- The context and the victories

In times of savage austerity, strategies to privatise public services are multiplying. In particular, countries dependent on EU 'aid' are forced by the Troika to sell off water and other fundamental public utilities, as conditions for receiving EU loan packages. No surprise at similar "shock therapy": neoliberalism uses the crisis to destroy social rights and to privatise commons, public goods and public services. In other words, austerity is a tool of neoliberalism and the objective of the decision to pursue austerity policies was made to exploit the opportunities opened up by the crisis, not to bring the crisis to an end. And so it is a question of continuing, or rather, of accelerating, the redistribution of income, of wealth and political power from the bottom towards the top that has been taking place since the 1980s: an “upside-down” redistribution threatened by the sudden crisis and by the failure of neoliberal policies. At the present time, in the midst of a crisis of overproduction, public services become another vital area for capital to colonise, in order to ensure it continues to be rewarded with ample profit margins. Now the fairy tale about how “efficient” and how “economical” private management of fundamental services are has proven just that, a fairy tale, as far as public opinion is concerned, since empirical experience of privatisation has been of an increase in rates and a decrease both in the quality and in the universality of the services. And with a change of tack, that which was previously marketed as “better” and “efficient” is now simply passed off as “compulsory”: they say that it is necessary to sell off and privatise in order to raise cash and thus decrease public debt, and they persist in describing a private debt crisis as a sovereign debts crisis.

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ECCHR files complaint to the Federal Tribunal

Berlin / Zürich, 9 January 2014 – The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, together with Zürich-based attorneys Marcel Bosonnet and Florian Wick, have brought the case of the murdered trade unionist Luciano Romero to the Federal Tribunal. They represent the widow of the Colombian activist who had worked for a
subsidiary of Nestlé. In December 2013, the Swiss Cantonal Court in Vaud rejected a
complaint against the closing of investigations. The Cantonal Court thereby confirmed the reasoning of the Prosecutors Office that the investigations were statute-barred. After 15 months of inactivity, the Prosecutors had decided not to initiate investigations against the managers of Nestlé or the company itself.

In doing so, the Court failed to understand the statute of limitation with respect to the
corporate liability, which does not depend on the date of the crime. The company has not undertaken any measures in order to remedy deficient organization in the company. This so-called organizational deficit, on which Nestlé’s liability is founded, cannot therefore be statute-barred. Furthermore, the Court does not take into consideration the recent legal opinion of the Swiss Federal Council, which supports the reasoning of ECCHR and the attorneys Bosonnet and Wick.

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What does it take for a movement to actually win? Organizers in the campaign against water privatization in Greece share their story and their strategy.

The path to the privatization of water in Greece was paved by the entry into the stock market in 1999 of the two major water companies, which led to the French multinational Suez entering the market. But it is now, with the loan agreement between the Greek government and the Troika of foreign lenders, that the real sell-off is to take place. For those citizens patient enough to read the whole document, there is a clause on page 682 of Law 4046/2012 which clearly includes in the macabre long list of assets to be privatized the two biggest water companies of Greece, both profitable: EYDAP (Athens and region) and EYATH (Thessaloniki and region).

Since July 2012, when SAVEGREEKWATER.ORG, the initiative for the non-privatization of water, was launched, we have been constantly strategizing on how to stop this from happening. We have collaborated closely with members of the two unions and several other organizations in Greece and abroad, and have struggled side-by-side with other movements like Movement 136, which aims for the social management of EYATH through a cooperatives of users; SOSte to Nero, an anti-privatization front in Northern Greece; Watervolo, protecting the springs at the beautiful Pelion mountain from industrialization; and numerous other networks in Greece. Stopping privatization is a first step in a vision for a non-profit, rational and democratic management of water, but for that we might need to found NONPROFITWATER.GR, where most of us would probably romantically enrol.

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