In recent weeks there have been attempts to discount the ongoing significance of the grass-roots campaign to stop negotiations of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment. While there is cause to celebrate the news that the MAI has been put into ‘deep freeze’, it is important for opponents of this regressive treaty to remain vigilant. Certainly it would have been a disaster if the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) had endorsed the treaty, however, the political realities of the outcome are still ambiguous.

With or without international condemnation of the treaty, the MAI was always destined to be sent back into the more inclusive WTO (World Trade Organisation) so that the third world could be pressured into signing. No doubt the name of a new agreement will be different but the radical free-market principles upon which it is based will remain the same. The global financiers driving such negotiations are determined to continue drafting a ‘bill of rights for corporations’ at the expense of labour, environmental and human rights standards. There are already indications that the MAI will be ‘thawed out’ and used as a reference text. The good news is that the negotiations within the WTO will be much easier to monitor as it is a more open forum than the secretive OECD.