Water

Teaser text for second dummy Aenean eu leo quam. Pellentesque ornare sem lacinia quam venenatis vestibulum. Curabitur blandit tempus porttitor.

In CEO's December 2015 interview with Renato Cinco, the City Councillor and chair of Rio’s Special Committee on the Water Crisis already warned of privatisation threats. Now, Brazil's “interim” government, signed an emergency loan to the State of Rio de Janeiro to help finance the 2016 Olympics infrastructure - a bailout conditional on the privatisation of the State's public water supply and sanitation company. 

CEO turns the spotlight on another of the interest groups operating within the European Parliament.

The stubborn and aggressive imposition of privatisation by Troika goes against the will of Greek citizens and represents a direct attack on democracy.

The concessions directive, which has the stated object of opening markets and eliminating “discrepancies among national regimes”, would end the exemption that has so far existed for drinking water supply and for the first time bring it under the rules of the EU’s single market. Previous attempts to bring water under single market rules failed due to resistance from civil society and MEPs opposed to water becoming a commodity, but this time the European Parliament has been less vigilant.

Be it out of sheer ignorance or because it is serving narrow corporate interests, or both, the European Commission is pushing for water supply privatisation in Europe precisely when the business model that this policy wants to support is dying.

As a member of the 'Troika', the European Commission (with the International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank) has been responsible for setting the loan conditions for Greece, Portugal and other countries receiving rescue loans in the context of the sovereign debt crisis. These conditions, which have been widely criticised for the emphasis on cutting public budgets, include in the cases of Greece and Portugal large-scale privatisation of public services, including water utilities.

Cities worldwide are experiencing the failures of water privatisation. Unequal access, broken promises, environmental hazards and scandalous profit margins are prompting municipalities to take back control of this essential service. This new book from Corporate Europe Observatory, Transnational Institute and the Municipal Services Project examines this growing trend for water ‘remunicipalisation’.

Case studies analyse the transition from private to public water provision in Paris, Dar es Salaam, Buenos Aires and Hamilton, and look at a national-level experiment in Malaysia.

Water flows from the taps of EU citizens mainly thanks to public water companies. The exception is France (and more recently the UK), where private companies have also managed and maintained water and sewage systems. But the new French Commissioner for DG Internal Market, Michel Barnier, suggested all this could perhaps change when he appeared before the European Parliament last week.