Beginners Guide to Trade Seattle to Brussels Network (S2B)

The ‘Seattle to Brussels Network’ (S2B) was formed in the aftermath of the World Trade Organisation’s 1999 Seattle Ministerial to challenge the corporate-driven agenda of the European Union and its Member States aimed at the progressive and far-reaching liberalisation and deregulation of global trade and investment flows.

S2B is a Europe-wide network of trade activists and serves as a tool to coordinate and develop critical analyses and joint lobby and advocacy campaigns on European trade and investment policy. S2B comprises organisations working for development, the environment and human rights, women and farmers organisations, trade unions and social movements as well as research institutes, who work together to open up the EU’s corporate trade agenda to economic alternatives and more heterodox policy options, with the aim of transforming it into a truly sustainable, gender-just development framework.

S2B’s political objectives include the ambition to roll back the power and authority of the fora and agreements used to implement the EU’s corporate-driven trade and investment agenda; to expose and challenge the undemocratic nature of EU decision making on trade issues; and to promote a sustainable, socially and democratically accountable system of trade. S2B engages in co-ordinated campaign activities with broad participation that focuses on activities where pan-European civil society activity is essential for challenging decisions taken at the European Commission and Council level and works to ensure that the network activities are co-ordinated with those of other global networks and reflect the concerns of Southern groups.

Contributors include: Ante Wessels, Bruno Ciccaglione, Frédéric Viale, Tilman Santarius, Marc Maes, Peter Fuchs, Pia Eberhardt, Roeline Knottnerus,  Rebecca Varghese Bucholz , Michel Cermak, Amélie Canonne, Oliver Prausmüller, Pietje Vervest and Cecilia Olivet