June 17, 2003
INTERNATIONAL LAW TO OUTLAW PRIVATE SECTOR
U.S. Battles Europe to Narrow A Treaty Banning Corruption (Bob Davis, Wall Street Journal, 6/17/2003)The U.S. and Europe are battling over an ambitious global treaty to ban corruption, largely because Europe wants the pact to cover businesses and the U.S. wants it restricted to governments....
U.S. officials criticize the provisions Europeans seek as too vague, too unsettled legally or simply impractical. They especially object to European plans to include business corruption in the pact, saying that many practices viewed as corrupt in government aren't improper in business, and that business customs differ among countries. Giving a salesman a gift worth $200 may be customary in Asia, for instance, but could be considered a bribe ...
"It's problematic," says William Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, a Washington-based trade group of large exporters. "People in other countries could sue American companies in court elsewhere claiming that [U.S. companies'] actions contravened the convention, even if that doesn't contravene U.S. law." People who lose business deals, he worries, could use the treaty to sue their rivals for alleged corrupt practices....
European negotiators say businesses sometimes make illicit payments among themselves and that those corrupt business practices should be barred. The pact would bar bribes paid from one business to another ...
Business consists of exchanges of benefits. To outlaw "bribes paid from one business to another" is to verge on outlawing business itself; it puts all business activity into a questionable legal status, enabling governments to use the threat of corruption charges to domineer over businesspersons. In fact, the treaty may well increase corruption, by enabling government officials to hold businesses for ransom under its vague and far-reaching provisions.
Meanwhile, who is to enforce the treaty against governments? Is anyone going to hold Jacques Chirac responsible for the bribes he's received from FINA-Total-Elf?
It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the European goal is to diminish the global private sector and impede globalization by making international trade risky and costly. How is it that the French manage to dominate the European Union so? Perhaps the best lack all conviction.