EUROPEANPOWELL

Did you know Birmingham has been divided up into 6 deregulated Special Economic Zones (SEZs)?

What does this entail for Birmingham’s residents?

Birmingham council was issued with an S114 notice which is technically bankruptcy. What happens next when SEZs are installed in entire city regions?

Under the terms of a ‘corporate political model’, deregulated SEZs operate under ‘localised freedoms’ which are the primary focus in UK SEZs that the Tories, Labour and MSM refuse to reveal to the general public.

What is typifies deregulation in SEZs? Workers rights are shredded, modern-day slavery is accelerated including child labour, feudalism takes hold, money laundering and on/offshoring wealth is commonplace in SEZs, council assets get stripped, and sold off to private equity, weapons, drugs, human trafficking are rife, sovereignty is sold to the highest bidder, public services are privatised, this includes libraries, education, emergency services, healthcare, housing, refuse collection, security, social care, tax collection, public parks.

Corporations setting up in the UK’s free zones get access to £160 million in UK State aid (which is public money) per zone. 74 SEZs x £160 million = £11 billion 840 million These figures may seem high but they are not sustainable for long-term growth, what will happen is boom-and-bust.

Companies setting up inside SEZs get numerous corporate tax breaks for a period of 10 years. Companies notoriously chase tax breaks and public subsidies in SEZs. Job displacement is a common feature as people leave one run-down region looking for jobs in an SEZ. Corporations are already pushing to extend their tax breaks beyond the 10-year deadline.

All UK 74 SEZs and 12 Freeports are licensed for a quarter of a century, this was set by Jeremy Hunt. UK SEZs contravene the EU’s rules on State aid and a whole raft of regulations that protect public health, workers rights, food safety, and the environment.

Deregulation is the process of removing state regulations, typically in the economic sphere. It is the repeal of governmental regulation of the economy. Rachel Reeves talks about deregulation as the main driver for economic growth, to put money in working people’s pockets, but she not telling the public the whole truth, deregulation is catnip for corporations who don’t want to pay their taxes, who don’t want to pay their employees a decent wage, and who certainly don’t want to protect the environment. This is capitalism without democracy

What Reeves is putting into action is classic neoliberal ‘trickle-down economics’. Those at the top get rich first, funded by the state, but we have consistently seen that trickle-down economic doesn’t work.

SEZs are designated regions under ‘a governmental authority’ with deregulation built in to facilitate company’s growth targets, the CEOs and shareholders are the ones who benefit the most.

Reminder, the EU’s Single Market is structured to maintain a level playing field, the 82 SEZs in the EU are strictly regulated to prevent distortions in the Single Market that create an unlevel playing field. Anyone telling you the UK’s reincarnation of SEZs has nothing to do with Brexit are lying to you. https://europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2020/646164/EPRS_BRI(2020)646164_EN.pdf

I recently went on a live chat with a UK Government representative as part of a FOI request, my question was do UK SEZs and Freeports licenses contain ISDS clauses within them? He couldn’t answer my question.

All post-Brexit CPTPP free trade deals have ISDS embedded in them, confirmed in a Parliamentary Oral Evidence meeting on 19th April 2023 with Kemi Badenoch.

You can read about that here:

Nothing to see here, just Kemi Badenoch admitting in April 2023 that ISDS is built into all post-Brexit CPTPP deals, meaning countries can sue the UK Govt for infringements on any Foreign country’s right to allow a supranational body to regulate and restrict sovereign decisions… pic.twitter.com/dcv9WFb2nH

— EuropeanPowell (@EuropeanPowell) December 15, 2024

It actually wouldn’t make neoliberal economic sense if the UK’s 86 free zones didn’t have ISDS built-in to the contracts given the absolute corruption that is perpetually present in the UK’s private sector. The global patterns of deregulated SEZs being corporate playgrounds for oligarchs, libertarians, and disaster capitalists alike accelerated after the 2008 financial crash, there are 5,400 SEZs in the world today. Zone Fever has arrived by stealth in Brexit Britain.

A summary of Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS)
ISDS allows corporations to sue Govts for billions in damages, bypassing the sovereign nations’ domestic courts.
Countries that have signed up to ISDS in trade deals effectively sell their sovereignty to corporations, meaning…

— EuropeanPowell (@EuropeanPowell) December 17, 2024

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This article (Birmingham is host to 6 deregulated Special Economic Zones, it is no coincidence that Birmingham council is bankrupt.) was created and published by EuropeanPowell and is republished here under “Fair Use” 

Featured image: birminghampress.com

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