The association pour la Taxation des Transactions financières et pour l'Action Citoyenne Association for a Taxation of financial Transactions as living as Citizen's Action, ATTAC is an activist organisation originally created to promote the imposing of the tax on foreign exchange transactions.
Originally called "Action for a Tobin Tax to guide the Citizen", ATTAC was a single-issue movement demanding the introduction of the requested Tobin tax on currency speculation. ATTAC has enlarged its scope to a wide range of issues related to globalisation, & monitoring the decisions of the World Trade Organization WTO, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD, and the International Monetary Fund IMF. 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 take andinformation, and to promote and carry out activities of any kinds for the recapture, by the citizens, of the power that the financial sector has on any aspects of political, economic, social and cultural life throughout the world. such(a) means include the taxation of transactions in foreign exchange markets Tobin tax."
ATTAC refutes claims that it is for an anti-globalisation movement, but it criticises the neoliberal ideology that it sees as dominating economic globalisation. It sustains 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 non profit is in focus.
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 continues free trade — "everything that these movements are attacking. They're misusing my name."