How Long To Fire A Fire Extinguisher

impressions of the alternative summit: often exciting, but sometimes imprecise

(Michael Kömm) After the exciting opening of the alternative summit on Tuesday night awaited the participants on Wednesday a wide range: With eight panels and 120 workshops, the program was filled to bursting, so you always had a concern at least as interesting event miss at the same time to. First, I attended the panel "The Global Europe Strategy: A serious threat to development and the environment" part. The strategy of the EU Commission - said Peter Fuchs WEED - as it describes the external, external side of the Lisbon strategy, the EU wants the world to rise to the "most competitive" region. Among other things, it's about at present, given the stalled trade liberalization at the multilateral level (within the WTO) a "bilateral" supplement to create.

referred in this context Ghanaian trade expert from the African Trade Network Gyeke Tanoh on the strategic role of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPAs) which the EU is currently negotiating with ACP countries. Although the Green MEP Frithjof Schmidt said the critical view of the EPAs, he took courage for the further support of the negotiations. For the balance of political power in this process are far from clear.

The international strategy workshop on "Innovative development financing, public goods and financial markets," the WEED, Global Public Finance and the European Network on CTT (Currency Transaction Tax ") to line up, dealt with concrete strategies for second UN Conference on Financing for Development in late 2008 in Doha place should ( >>> W & E 03-04/2007 ) and for the critical review of the implementation of the Paris Declaration on quality of development aid, which is scheduled for September 2008 in Accra. Afternoon, it became even more practical: Resolved, concrete steps, such as a common website and a joint book project.

Another highlight I hoped the evening of the panel discussion "The anti-globalization movement - balance and perspectives". But my hopes were sadly disappointed. For the PanelistInnen could stand apart from the purely philosophical introduction John Holloway's only slightly: Terms were used completely out of focus, a strong anti-globalization movement was caused constructed concrete future steps were - if any - kept completely general, and - were the current discourse on the question of violence virtually ignored - especially. More realism and self-criticism of the event would have done well.