Groups Across Europe Issue Statement on TTIP and Trump: "We Can Defeat Them Both"

A coalition of civil society groups and trade unions from across Europe have issued statements today saying that:

"Trade deals like TTIP and CETA have given oxygen to Trump. The best way to defeat him is to remove that oxygen - to stop these trade deals and build a democratic economy that works for everyone."

A statement has been published online with signatories from countries including Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Hungary, while a letter that was published in the Guardian today was signed by trade union representatives from UNISON, Unite, the GMB and the NUT.

While it was reported today that a senior German official had said that TTIP was 'not realistic' under Trump, the civil society statement states that TTIP was already widely acknowledged to be dead long before Trump's election victory, and that the success of the campaign to stop the trade deal had been carried out by hundreds of thousands of activists and civil society groups on both sides of the Atlantic whose values were antithetical to those of Trump.

The statement argues that despite Trump's criticisms of trade deals like TTIP and the TPP, he, "fully believes in deregulation, privatisation, and putting profit before people. No wonder stocks in some of the deadliest corporations in the world have soared following Trump's election. His economic policy will not help working class communities. He is a divisive force who will tear apart communities and make it harder for them to defend themselves from the business interests he represents. Trump's policies are based not on fairer trade, but on exploiting foreign countries, risking international tensions and dumping economic problems onto others. It is exactly these policies that gave rise to the world wars of the twentieth century."

Nick Dearden the director of Global Justice Now and one of the signatories of the statement said:

"There's a common factor fuelling the rise of both Trump and right-wing populism across Europe, and that is the neoliberal economic policies that have left vast sections of society on the scrap heap while the 1% get richer and richer. There's an urgent need for policies and trade deals that benefit the majority of people, and so activists, unions, civil society groups and politicians need to up their game in the coming months to stop the toxic trade deal between Canada and the EU from coming to pass."

Mark Dearn, senior trade campaigner from War on Want and a signatory of the statement said:

"It is essential that MEPs and the European Commission listen to the people of Europe and stop EU-Canada deal CETA. Secretly negotiated deals like CETA and TTIP, which vastly extend corporate power at the expense of people and the environment, are a recipe for inequality that far right populists seize on to further their agenda of hate. We need a truly radical, internationalist approach to trade that will allow us to safeguard human rights, and tackle climate change and inequality."