All Publications

NO to the Free Trade Agreement with the EU! We, the undersigned organisations – human rights organisations, trade unions, peasant farmer organisations, indigenous people’s organisations, Afro-descendants, victims of armed conflict, students’ organisations, women’s organisations, environmental and development organisations – wish to see a transformation in the existing relations between the European Union (EU) and Latin […]

The ‘Seattle to Brussels Network’ (S2B) was formed in the aftermath of the World Trade Organisation’s 1999 Seattle Ministerial to challenge the corporatedriven 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. The S2B network joins together more than 50 […]

The proposed EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partners hip (TTIP/TAFTA), and its socio-economic & environmental consequences Talks between the European Union and the United States on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) took off this summer with many political and business leaders hailing the deal as a silver bullet against the difficult economic recovery […]

An Analysis of the Final Text of the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement More than five years after the May 2009 launch of negotiations between Canada and the European Union toward a Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), it was announced on August 5, 2014 that “officials have reached a complete text, allowing […]

How the European Commission refuses to change the system Berlin, 2 October 2015. The European Commission’s new proposal for an ‘investment court’ has been unable to diminish the wide-ranging public criticism of the investment protection mechanism envisaged in TTIP (the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership)1 . The reason is simple: the Commission’s proposal remains firmly […]

The European Commission and Canada had the opportunity, in the final text of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), to drop the right of foreign investors to take recourse to investorstate dispute settlement (ISDS). They failed to do so. In fact, European and Canadian negotiators decided to retain the worst provisions of the ISDS […]

An analysis of the final text of the Canada–European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement Seven years after negotiations began on the EU–Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), political leaders appear finally ready to sign the deal at a ceremony in Brussels in October. Much has changed since then. For Europe, CETA started as […]

Towards a Democratic and Globally Just Resource Policy The Federal Republic of Germany depends on the import of metallic, mineral and fossil fuel resources. The extraction of these raw materials takes place at the expense of the environment and leads to human rights violations. The German Federal Government does not take these consequences adequately into […]

How the EU intervenes in the sovereign fiscal policy of resource-rich countries Raw materials, including raw materials for energy production, as well as semi-finished products, and components make up two thirds of all EU imports; more than half of these im-ports are transported to Germany. Germany’s status as ‘export world champion’ means that it relies […]

Human rights risks along the nickel supply chain Being one of the biggest export nations, Germany is strongly dependent on raw material imports. Nearly 100 percent of the metallic primary raw materials are imported from abroad and processed by German industry. The German raw material requirement has strongly increased over the past decades and according […]

The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between the European Union and Canada is the first trade agreement between the EU and a major world economy and the most far-reaching bilateral trade and investment agreement negotiated to date. In the context of increasingly expensive medicines, reduced access to healthcare and the burgeoning weight of chronic […]

Will Industry 4.0 Create New Raw Materials Demands? The digitalization of production processes, in Germany also known as Industry 4.0, promises economic growth in times of stagnation. According to business organizations and market-­liberal politicians, digitalization will provide solutions for current global challenges like economic stagnation, (youth) unemployment, post-financial crisis or climate change. From buildings and […]

The debate on mandatory human rights supply chain due diligence is gaining momentum. Legal regulations are discussed extensively both at the international level as well as in Germany. In this debate, one country in particular is getting attention: China. According to some industry associations and symphatizing politicians, if Germany or the EU were to introduce […]

How trade agreements could contribute to a more sustainable world economy In this study, Ciaran Cross takes on the task of thinking through what it would mean to integrate effective climate and environmental provisions in a trade agreement. The starting point for this exercise are existing trade agreements and WTO rules, which has the advantage […]

How trade agreements could strengthen human rights and environmental protection in the raw materials sector The European Union is one of the largest importers of raw materials, with its companies being particularly dependent on the mining of minerals in other parts of the world. To secure a steady supply, the EU has on the one […]