New Lines Within the European Civil Society Mobilizations Against the TTIP

ABSTRACT

The article examines how negotiations of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) have spurred a broad and highly heterogeneous opposition movement within European civil society. The extensive regulatory scope of the proposed agreement, spanning far beyond traditional trade-related issues, has meant that a broad range of potentially affected stakeholders have become involved in the protests. Findings from questionnaires sent to organisations partaking in the opposition to the TTIP identify novel categories of issues at stake, as well as the formation of new transnational ties. The article applies a neo-Gramscian conceptual approach to the analysis of the new channels and platforms for social movements to challenge transnational elite consensus. The protest movement´s successful contribution to stalling the agreement suggests a certain contemporary agential space to challenge neoliberal globalisation.

KEYWORDS:

• TTIP
• social movements
• mega-regional trade agreements
• neo-Gramscianism
• counter-hegemony

Acknowledgements

I thank Ana Flávia Granja e Barros and Jonathan Kishen Gamu for useful guidance and advice with this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Niels Søndergaard is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for International Relations, University of Brasilia, Brazil. His interests span different thematic areas within the field of international political economy, including critical approaches to natural recourse production, governance, and trade.

ORCID

Niels Søndergaard http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8727-7912

Notes

1 The ISDS mechanism, through which private investors could challenge national regulation, has been substituted by a Stat-to-State dispute settlement mechanism.

2 The response rate was at 18,15 per cent.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior.