Zero ethics in the lobby-occupied EU officially confirmed

globinfo freexchange

As expected: The European Commission’s Ad-hoc Ethical Committee found no problem with Barroso's recruitment from Goldman Sachs in such a short time after his term as President of the European Commission.

From Corporate Europe Observatory:

Reacting to the European Commission’s Ad-hoc Ethical Committee recommendation not to sanction former Commission President Barroso for joining Goldman Sachs International, Corporate Europe Observatory’s transparency campaigner Vicky Cann said: “The committee’s opinion that Barroso did not breach the EU Treaty when he joined Goldman Sachs as non-executive chairman and adviser flies in the face of the moral outrage expressed by citizens, MEPs, EU institution staff and the French President. The recommendation really highlights the weakness of the Commissioners’ Code of Conduct. Its 18-month cooling-off period is far too short to prevent conflicts of interest and the central notions of integrity and discretion are neither properly defined nor linked to concrete rules." [...] "More than 200,000 citizens have criticised Barroso’s move to the banking giant because of its responsibility in the economic crisis, the Greek debt crisis and its brazen lobbying against EU financial regulation." [...] "There is no question that Barroso must be sanctioned. But even more importantly, the ethics committee must be comprehensively reformed to enable fully independent decision-making, while the cooling-off period and lobby ban must be extended to at least three years for ex-commissioners and five years for former Commission Presidents."

It's not only the US bipartisan establishment that it is fully corrupted. It's also the European institutions who have been fully occupied by the US and European groups of interests.

Only a few things about Barroso administration:

1. According to the Corporate Europe Observatory, Barroso administration had been proven to be champion in serving interests. Through the course of the crisis, attempts by corporations and corporate lobby groups to influence EU policies have probably been more successful than ever, in part due to a close relationship with the Commission. Corporate Europe Observatory has gathered a lot of evidence over time and covering many different areas that shows how the Commission is easily captured by corporate interests. This report is an attempt to produce a condensed version of how the Commission has come to act on behalf of corporations over the past five years, focusing on climate policies, agriculture and food, finance, economic, and fiscal policies.
   
   
2. According to the former correspondent of the Financial Times in Italy, Alan Friedman, Barroso came up with the idea, back in 2011, that the then Greek PM George Papandreou could be replaced by the technocrat Lucas Papademos, as eventually happened, when Papandreou "dared" to think to hold a referendum on the acceptance of the terms of the eurozone bailout deal with Greece.
   
   
3. According to the Portuguese newspaper Publico, Barroso was in close contact with Goldman Sachs, already at the time when he was president of the European Commission. The bank was passing confidentially to Barroso team its proposals about changes in the European Union policies.
   
   
4. Documents released to the Guardian under freedom of information laws show that as far back as October 2011, Shell had begun lobbying the Barroso, who was succeeded by Jean-Claude Juncker last November, to scrap the bloc’s existing formula for linking carbon-cutting goals with binding renewable energy laws.

Do you need further proof about how corrupt and distant from the European citizens the EU has become?