Between the 26th and 28th of January 2013, the CELAC Summit (EU-LAC) will be held in Santiago, Chile. A Peoples Summit will be held in parallel from 25-27th of January.
The EU debt crisis foretells a more serious global debt crisis, caused by unlimited growth and the ongoing financial casino. Latin America's emerging financial and regional architecture offers hope for a new type of integration based on solidarity.
European transnational corporations are praised as "engines" of Europe's growth economy, however extensive research on the activities of 25 flagship companies have revealed evidence of labour abuses, deforestation, corruption, and attacks on human rights defenders.
Programme and background to Peoples' Tribunal on "Neoliberal Policies and European Transnational Corporations (TNCs) in Latin America and the Caribbean”.
This year's Madrid summit marks a key milestone in the ongoing development of the Enlazando Alternativas network for both highlighting EU complicity with human rights and environmental abuses and highlighting the real alternatives offered by social movements of integration and development that respect the rights of people, communities, and protect the environment.
The current paradigmatic crisis needs to be dealt with at the regional level. In this respect, Latin American movements have already mobilised and placed different models of development and integration at the centre of their struggle. However, the European Union model, whereby integration is geared towards the interests of transnational corporations, should be avoided.
The backlash from business and the opposition against Bolivia's trade policy with the EU was shrill enough to suggest that Bolivia had announced the end of external trade. Yet the Bolivian government's position is based on experience of the heavy costs of free trade for the majority of its citizens.
The structural adjustment policies of the Bretton Woods Institutions [the World Bank and the IMF] have for decades caused untold harm to people and nature. Their implicit or explicit cooperation with the TNCs cannot be denied. For all these reasons, we demand that European governments take responsibility for their corporations and cease their support for their predatory activities in Latin America.
