Registered stakeholders at the Trans-Pacific Partnership meeting in Auckland, New...
Registered stakeholders at the Trans-Pacific Partnership meeting in Auckland, New Zealand, have been “locked out” of the venue for the latest round of negotiations except for the “so-called stakeholder day,” University of Auckland law professor Jane Kelsey said in a…
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statement posted by American University’s Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property (http://xrl.us/bn4n8r). At past meetings, stakeholders had met with negotiators “who have short windows of opportunity at tea breaks or duck out from meetings,” said Kelsey, who has attended six rounds of talks. Stakeholders already knew their dedicated day “had been truncated from recent U.S. practice, abandoning the ‘market of tables’ where groups can set out their papers for negotiators to browse” and negotiators can “make arrangements for further discussions” on matters of interest, she said: But the New Zealand government “has effectively removed that option” for this round. Kelsey said she had to use the country’s Official Information Act just to get the “dates of the various subject group meetings” from the government: “It is patently obvious that our government is actively attempting to block us from having private interactions with negotiators who have their own concerns or want more information in areas they lack expertise, or are simply polite enough to respond to requests for meetings."