Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions and for Citizens' Action


The Association pour la Taxation des Transactions financières et pour l'Action Citoyenne is an activist organisation originally created to promote the establishment of a tax on foreign exchange transactions.

Background

Originally called "Action for a Tobin Tax to Assist the Citizen", ATTAC was a single-issue movement demanding the introduction of the so-called Tobin tax on currency speculation. ATTAC has enlarged its scope to a wide range of issues related to globalisation, and monitoring the decisions of the World Trade Organization, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the International Monetary Fund. ATTAC representatives attend the meetings of the G8 with the goal of influencing policymakers' decisions. Attac spokesmen recently criticised Germany for what it called the criminalisation of anti-G8 groups.
At the founding, ATTAC had specific statutory objectives based on the promotion of the Tobin tax. For example, ATTAC Luxembourg specifies in article 1 of its statutes that it
"aims to produce and communicate information, and to promote and carry out activities of all kinds for the recapture, by the citizens, of the power that the financial sector has on all aspects of political, economic, social and cultural life throughout the world. Such means include the taxation of transactions in foreign exchange markets."

ATTAC refutes claims that it is an anti-globalisation movement, but it criticises the neoliberal ideology that it sees as dominating economic globalisation. It supports those globalisation policies that their representatives characterise as sustainable and socially just. One of ATTAC's slogans is "The World is not for sale", denouncing the "merchandisation" of society. Another slogan is "Another world is possible", pointing to an alternative globalisation in which people and not profit is in focus.

James Tobin opposing ATTAC

Attac was founded to promote the Tobin tax by the Keynesian economist James Tobin. Tobin has said that Attac has misused his name. He says he has nothing in common with their goals and supports free trade — "everything that these movements are attacking. They're misusing my name."

Organisational history

In December 1997, Ignacio Ramonet wrote in Le Monde diplomatique an editorial in which he advocated the establishment of the Tobin tax and the creation of an organisation to pressure governments around the world to introduce the tax. ATTAC was created on June 3, 1998, during a constitutive assembly in France. While it was founded in France it now exists in over forty countries around the world. In France, politicians from the left are members of the association. In Luxembourg, Francois Bausch of the left Green party is the founding politician in the association's initial member list.
ATTAC functions on a principle of decentralisation: local associations organise meetings, conferences, and compose documents that become counter-arguments to the perceived neoliberal discourse. ATTAC aims to formalise the possibility of an alternative to the neoliberal society that is currently required of globalisation. ATTAC aspires to be a movement of popular education.

Views on Attac and its members in different countries

Finland

Communist Juhani Lohikoski, previously a chairman of Communist Youth League and Socialist League, served as the chairman of Finnish Attac for two terms. Yrjö Hakanen, chairman of the Communist Party of Finland, was a member of the board and a member of the founding committee. In March 2002 Aimo Kairamo, the long-time chief editor of the party organ of the Social Democrat Party, resigned from Attac and recommended the same decision for other social democrats because of the left-wing minority communists' leading positions. Soon also the social democrat foreign minister Erkki Tuomioja considered to follow Kairamo's example.

Sweden

Researcher Malin Gawell covers the birth and development of Attac Sweden in her doctoral thesis on activist entrepreneurship. She suggests that Attac in Sweden was formed by people seeking a new way of organising with flat hierarchy, and with the strongly sensed need of making a change as the driving force.


From another perspective, Sydsvenskan newspaper suggested that the downturn of memberships in Swedish Attac after the hype in the beginning of 2001 may be due to its views on trade policies.

Issues and activities

The main issues covered by ATTAC today are:
In France, ATTAC associates with many other left-wing causes.

Nestlégate

In the year 2008 Attac Switzerland was hit by a scandal which was later called Nestlégate by the local media. Between the years 2003 and 2005, the Swiss multinational food and beverage company Nestlé, engaged the external Security company Securitas AG, to spy on the Swiss Attac branch. Nestlé started the monitoring, when Attac Switzerland decided to work on a critical book about Nestlé.
Due to Nestlégate, Attac Switzerland filed a lawsuit against Nestlé which was decided in favour of Attac in January 2013, as the personal rights of the observed were violated. They received a compensation for damages of 3'000 Swiss francs each, which has an equivalent of about 3'230 USD at the date of the proclamation of sentence.