Trade and investment liberalisation are considered to be important instruments of development policy, and indeed a fair and open trade system is one of the Millennium Development Goals. However, governments are still pursuing traditional policies of liberalisation, partly because of the strong influence of the business community.
SOMO wants to raise the political debate about the impact of trade and investment agreements on poverty and other social aspects, going beyond the traditional discourse on the macroeconomic impact of trade and investment liberalisation. SOMO links the negotiations and rules on international trade and investment with the actual conduct of corporations within these rules and agreements. This provides the basis for SOMO and her partners to engage in developing - within existing civil society networks - alternative trade and investment policies that contribute to poverty eradication, higher social and labour standards, and sustainable development.
Trade & Investment News
19-09-2011
In the week that the WTO Public Forum discusses “Seeking answers to global trade challenges” and the G20 Finance and Development ministers meet in Washington, and also three years after the financial crisis erupted in full, re-regulating the financial sector is still on the agenda in many countries, regions and financial forums. However, free trade negotiations that liberalise financial services have continued to propagate deregulatory rules as it is business as usual. The light-touch regulation of the last decades has shifted within Europe to a more restricting regulation model – but this has not yet found solid ground in the EU position in on-going trade negotiations.
07-02-2011
In contrast with the current wide-ranging financial reform agenda in the European Union (EU), the EU continues to liberalise a wide range of risky and non-risky financial services in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and other Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) as if the financial crisis never happened. In a new SOMO publication SOMO identifies specific examples on how new EU regulations are in contrast with the pre-crisis model that is still being applied in the GATS negotiations, the Cariforum-EU Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), and the EU-South Korea FTA.
