Geneva / Strasbourg, 06/07/2001 (Agence Europe) - On the occasion of the opening, on 6 July, of a two-day symposium to which the World Trade Organisation mainly invited NGOs, about one hundred anti-globalisation groups from twenty countries launched the campaign called "Our World is not for Sale". One can doubt the results of this "first symposium with non-governmental organisations since the collapse of WTO talks in Seattle in 1999", states a press release by the movements taking part in the campaign, which mainly reproaches the WTO for publishing "campaign materials attacking civil society critiques of WTO". According to these organisations, the symposium seems to be "a public relations tactic" allowing the WTO to "create an illusion of transparency and accessibility". The proposals made after Seattle with a view to re-organising the WTO's internal procedures seem to have been abandoned, the press release also said.
Furthermore, Guy Verhofstadt, European Council President, said in Strasbourg, in response to Marianne Thyssen (Belgian Christian Democrat) who put questions to him on the subject of the violent anti-globalisation demonstrations in Gothenburg, that an alternative summit of non-governmental organisations will be held in Brussels before the Laeken Summit on 13 and 14 December.