ATTAC is an international organization involved in the alter-globalization movement. We oppose neo-liberal globalization and develop social, ecological, and democratic alternatives so as to guarantee fundamental rights for all. Specifically, we fight for the regulation of financial markets, the closure of tax havens, the introduction of global taxes to finance global public goods, the cancellation of the debt of developing countries, fair trade, and the implementation of limits to free trade and capital flows.
A word on our history
The ‘Association pour la Taxation des Transactions financière et l’Aide aux Citoyens’ (Association for the Taxation of financial Transactions and Aid to Citizens) was founded in France in December 1998 after the publication in the Monde Diplomatique of an editorial entitled ‘Désarmer les marchés’ (Disarm the markets) that launched the notion of creating an association to promote the Tobin tax.
An international organization
The organization expanded very rapidly into the rest of the world with an ATTAC network around an international charter set up in 1999. Today, the association is active in some 40 countries, with over a thousand local groups and hundreds of organizations supporting the network.
A founding organization of “alter-globalization”
In 1999, ATTAC was present in Seattle during the demonstrations that led to the the failure of the WTO negotiations. It was one of the organizations that initiated the first World Social Forum in Porto Allegre in 2001. Over the past 10 years, it has participated in counter summits and demonstrations against the G8, the G20, the WTO, and the war in Iraq... It also mobilized, along with the alter-globalization movement, to demand true climate justice at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen.
An organization for another world
The alter-globalization movement is an emancipatory movement that opposes neo-liberal globalization. Its activists are convinced that access to basic needs for all and the emancipation of humankind cannot be brought about by global economic competition and free markets but can only result from pooling worldwide solidarity and global financing to guarantee these rights. They also think that the preservation of our planet cannot be attained through technological progress and the commercialisation of natural resources, but that it requires a radical redefinition of economic development away from productivism and consumerism. This implies that the common goods of humanity (health care, education, water, climate, biodiversity,...) must be given an international status that insures their protection, and that their preservation must be based on devoted financing through global taxes.
