An army is stationed in Brussels. Not only are the
special forces of the Belgian armed forces, patrolling the streets of
a city that is in a constant state of emergency. It is mainly the
"airborne battalions" by approximately 91,000 employees of
9,860 lobbies who ensure that there will be neither a single decision
which, even accidentally, will defend the interests of citizens
against private enterprises.
With an annual budget of 1.5 billion euro, they can buy,
blackmail or simply ... hire almost any employee of the European
institutions they wish.
These numbers do not provide of course the full picture
since they concern the lobbies that are voluntarily recorded in the
corresponding archive. What is certain is that about 6,200 lobbyists
have special access cards in the European Parliament (and they use
them almost daily), while almost 30,000 people live and work steadily
in Brussels with the sole aim to serve the interests of
multinationals in the EU decision making mechanisms.
The organization Alter EU which studies the
relationships of lobbies with EU institutions, estimates that about
83% of the meetings on a daily basis between lobbyists with senior
European Commission officials are not recorded, while for middle and
lower executives of the Commission the percentage exceeds 92%. This
means that pronouncements made by Juncker, that he would put the
uncontrolled action of big lobbies in order, were cheap fireworks.
In several cases the intervention of lobbies becomes
glaring when lazy commissioners and MEPs do not even bother to
rewrite the texts taken from multinational companies. A few years ago
the German electronic WDRTV network identified two such incidents
involved the Christian Democrat MEP Burkhard Balz and Markus Ferber
of the Christian Social Union (CSU). Both had submitted proposals on
the functioning of the banking system and the speculation in stock
markets, which were contained in documents of banking lobbies in
virtually identical terms. Especially when asked about the
"coincidence" in the texts, they argued that the lobbies
... stole their ideas.
The action of the lobbies starts from the simple daily
contacts with the approximately 30,000 European Commission officials
and reaches the formal involvement of lobbyists in the functioning of
the institutions. Specifically, the Commission operates under the
watchful eye of the famous groups of experts (expert groups) which
would supposedly represent the interests of ... civil society. A
recent survey by the Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) has shown
that, on average, these groups consist of 70% of multinational
representatives, 15% of NGO members, while only 2% of their members
comes from unions. Many times, the only limitations on the selection
of officials, comes from international organizations (such as the WTO
which prohibits tobacco companies to engage executives in a public
health expert panels), as the European Commission has no problem to
place, e.g. accounting firms specializing in offshore companies, in
groups that determine tax policy.
The result of these processes, is that the pressure
regime in the EU has become much more dark and uncontrollable,
related to the USA, where the presence of lobbies was born and
institutionalized (according to a version of the story, the term
lobby comes from the lobby of the Willard Hotel in Washington, where
the US President Ulysses Grant was doing business with the
entrepreneurs of the time). The EU officials have been proved very
good students of the US in the phenomenon of "revolving door",
i.e., the jumping of officials in the boards of colossal enterprises
and vice versa. The former vice-president of the European Commission,
Étienne Davignon, who has a background in some of the major energy
companies of Europe, was the first mover in the 80s, while the
Barroso passage to Goldman Sachs merely confirmed what everyone knew:
that you don't have to be in the board of a bank to be its employee.
The biggest change occurred after the crisis of
2007-2008 was the big enlargement of the banking lobby that literally
invaded the highest policy organs, violating even the rotten rules of
EU transparency.
Only the financial sector employs 1,700 lobbyists who
have 120 million euros per year at their disposal to "buy"
the EU conscience - that is thirty times more money from the budget
of all trade unions, NGOs, and consumer protection groups involved
with the functioning of the EU. This means practically that for every
employee of the European Union who deals with the banking issues,
correspond four representatives of the lobbies.
In the "heart" of the banking invasion resides
the famous Institute of International Finance (IIF). The
«super-weapon" of bankers was created in 1983 to represent the
largest financial institutions of the world against developing
countries, such as Mexico, which were sinking into debt crises.
Contrary to what some argue, the EU is not occupied by
large companies, but created by them. Since the time of agreements of
Coal and Steel and later through the Maastricht Treaty (through which
specifically the lobbies of bankers and industrialists like AMUE,
imposed the creation of the euro), the lobbies of the European
bourgeoisie were shaping every last detail of the EU policy.
Article
by Aris Chatzistefanou, translated from the original source:
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