About Trade & Investment

6 July 2009
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TNI’s Trade & Investment Justice project plays a critical role in challenging the European Union’s 'free' trade and investment policies. Together with partner organisations and regional and bi-regional networks in Africa, Asia and Latin America as well as Europe, TNI provides analysis, supports the development of campaigns and the strengthening of networks, and advances an advocacy agenda that puts forward alternatives to the corporate-driven EU trade and investment policies.

Our objectives

TNI’s Trade and Investment project aims to: - Expose the aggressive EU’s trade and investment agenda and the impacts of EU FTAs and Investment Agreements in order to stop ongoing negotiations and roll-back existing commitments that reduces developing country governments' policy space to regulate. - Propose an Alternative Trade and Investment Model that put people and the environment before profit. . - Put into practice, share analysis and look to scale up existing alternatives.

Activities in 2012

What do we do?

TNI’s Trade and Investment project follows a multi-level strategy of action:

  • Research: we develop evidence-based research and analysis of regional trade and investment agreements and its impacts in order to support the advocacy efforts of civil society and social movements. TNI has extensive expertise (and can mobilise experts) on a comprehensive and comparative (i.e Latin America and Asia) analysis of the EU’s foreign policy; the influence of the corporate sector in policy making both in the EU and in EU policies towards South.
  • Popular Education: we produce popular and accessible materials such as videos, primers and leaflets and organise seminars and workshops to explain the impacts of EU trade and investment agreements.  TNI is committed to producing material in different languages to reach broader and particular audiences on the realities of EU policies to Southern audiences. For example, some of our publications have been translated into Vietnamese; Korean, Chinese and Japanese for Asian audiences and Spanish and Portuguese for Latin American audiences.
  • Network Building: we actively contribute to building regional and bi-regional multi-sectoral social movements and civil society coalitions. Over the last 10 years, TNI has helped to anchor and facilitate bi-regional networks such as the Biregional Network Europe-Latin America Enlazando Alternativas, the Asia-Europe People’s Forum (AEPF) and EU-ASEAN FTA Network; the European network Seattle to Brussels (S2B) and the international network Our World is not for Sale (OWINFS).
  • Campaigns: we campaign together with partners in the North and the South calling for changes in European Union trade and investment policies. A recent example is the campaign for the “No to Ratification of EU-Colombia FTA”. Also, together with several members of the EU-based Seattle2Brussels network, TNI conducted a critical analysis of EU's new investment policy and initiated a campaign of advocacy and awareness-raising to draw attention to the implications of the new policy in Europe and around the world.
  • Engagement with governments and advocacy: we facilitate advocacy work on the part of southern civil society coalitions in Europe as well as doing direct lobby work ourselves. As part of those efforts, we facilitate high-level debates on European trade and investment policy with key policy makers in the European Union, organise lobby tours in Brussels and other European capitals and engage MEPs as well as national policy makers.
  • Communication and Media: we actively reach out to the media and strategic opinion makers in relevant fields as an important means of shifting public opinion.

Recent publications from Trade & Investment

Nuclear Phase-Out put to the test

Swedish energy company Vattenfall filed request for arbitration at the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), after Germany’s decision to phase out nuclear energy.

A Brave New Transatlantic Partnership

A report by the Seattle to Brussels Network demystifies the alleged economic benefits of the deal and exposes how it could harm people, the environment and the economy on both sides of the Atlantic.

Between Mobilisation and Conflict

The agrarian sector launched a national strike in Colombia which spread quickly across other sectors, against the impacts of the FTA with the US and Canada. It is evident that the current economic model has failed as a result of a combination of several factors, structurally and historically.

A transatlantic corporate bill of rights

This briefing analyses leaked proposals for so-called investor-state dispute settlement under the proposed EU-US deal and reveals a determined lobby campaign from industry lobby groups and law firms to grant unprecedented rights to corporations to sue governments for legislation and regulations that interfere with their profits.