Susan George, Contribution to the Encuentros de Salamanca, 21-23 June 2006

The Salamanca Encuentros roundtable in which I have been asked to participate is titled Social Europe: Social Cohesion and Wellbeing. My contribution will argue that Europe is not promoting social cohesion but, to the contrary, is fast travelling towards social dislocation and a lower degree of wellbeing than in the past. This outcome is not an accident but reflects, rather, deliberate policy choices, designed to promote neo-liberal, market-oriented "solutions" whose impact is not merely predictable but dire.
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Hilary Wainwright , TNI Website, 15 June 2005

To work out the meaning of the UK Presidency you don't need to hire Sherlock Holmes; just read the Wall Street Journal of 16th October 2003 where UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown explains New Labour's agenda for Europe: `economic reform should be embraced with even greater speed. The right response to global competitive pressure is to liberalize, deregulate, and remove the old state aid subsides, agree an open competition policy, and remove barriers that hamper companies crossing borders. ... Europe must embrace labor market flexibility... .we should recognize that a strong transatlantic economic partnership - and a pro-European, pro-Atlantic consensus-is critical to long term prosperity.'

Dot Keet, Alternative Information and Development Centre AIDC Regional Briefings 4, 2004

The externally oriented motivations for creating stronger regional economic groupings between developing countries, and seeking forms of political cooperation between their governments and between their peoples organisations, are aimed in part to empower participating countries to position themselves more effectively in a difficult and even hostile international economic and political system. This includes the need to deal together with the strategic aims and divisive tactics of powerful foreign governments, particularly of the European Union and the United States.
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By Peter Fuchs and Klaus Schilder, World Economy, Ecology & Development (WEED), Germany, October 2004

"...So should we now be ready (...) to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of alternative approaches, plurilateral and bilateral, if the pursuit of the (...) objectives in the WTO were now to be blocked by other participants? All of these [bilateral and regional] activities and initiatives (...) should now be reconsidered to determine whether their deepening and / or acceleration would be in the interest of the EU."
— Peter Carl, DG Trade, in a think-piece, 25 September 2003

Dot Keet, September 2004, AIDC

Reports from Cape Town on the counter strategies by South Africa and its partners in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to the EU's thrust for free trade access to - and through - South Africa into the rest of Southern/Africa.

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Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), June 2004

_{The EU-US summit (June 25-26, Dromoland Castle, Ireland) may result in a de facto launch of free trade negotiations between the EU and the US. Despite a complete absence of public debate and support, there is significant political momentum behind moving further towards a "barrier-free Transatlantic marketplace". Little-known but influential bodies like the Transatlantic Policy Network and the Transatlantic Business Dialogue, campaigning behind the scenes, are having an impact.}

CONCORD Cotonou Working Group, April 2004.

Since September 2002, the European Union has been negotiating "Economic Partnership Agreements" (EPAs) with 77 developing countries from Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific [1]. These negotiations run parallel with the multilateral trade talks at the WTO, and are part and parcel of a broad European trade liberalisation agenda that demands far-reaching trade concessions by developing countries.