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May: eu and business on trial for crimes in latin america

In May 2008, social, political and popular movements, workers, migrants, Indigenous and campesino communities, and women's, youth and trade union movements from Latin America, the Caribbean and Europe, gathered in Lima for the Peoples’ Summit, Linking Alternatives III (Enlazando Alternativas 3).

May: eu and business on trial for crimes in latin america

Enlazando Alternativas is a bi-regional civil society network established to challenge the neoliberal policies of the European Union and its attempts to access economies and natural resources in Latin America and the Caribbean through free trade agreements.

 

what happened?

Together with allies like La Via Campesina, Jubilee South, and the Brazilian Network for the Integration of the Peoples, FoEI campaigners from Latin America and Europe organized a range of activities at the Peoples’ Summit, focusing on strategic themes including food sovereignty, Global Europe, agrofuels and the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes.

 

FoEI also co-organized the second session of the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal against European corporations committing human rights violations in Latin America. Altogether, more than 20 European companies were accused of committing environmental and human rights violations. FoEI member groups from the ATALC region presented three detailed cases. FoE Uruguay / REDES put the case against the Finnish pulp and paper company Botnia; and FoE Colombia / CENSAT presented cases against Unión Fenosa (an electricity company) and Aguas de Barcelona/Proactiva (water).

 

FoEI’s Real World Radio team broadcast news from Lima in two languages, for both the European and Latin American public.

 

what changed?

The People’s Summit brought campaigners from Latin America and Europe together, to address the abuses of European transnationals operating in the region, and make the case against the bilateral trade agreements currently being pursued by the EU. The cases against the corporations were heard by an international panel of judges, and the session resolved to "morally and ethically sanction" the companies as well as the "political, economic, financial, productive and judicial conducts and practices of the neoliberal model, implemented and permitted by the States and the Institutions of the European Union."

 

read the details and final ruling:

 

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