it was a clear message to the following you summit on the heads of governments a few days later. adopt the single market monitoring infrastructure projects a flexible labor market deregulation downsize public services austerity measures and so on and so on the whole your liberal agenda for them basically are. confirmed by american scholar stepping into the topic maria green cowles i was interested and doing something about europe and something about the european union i started talking with some of the c.e.o.'s and in particular the corporate affairs managers of these firms to ask them what happened and everybody had a little piece of the story and then i met with keith richardson. keith and i would talk about different things and he would give me some ideas and i'd go and i'd talk with other individuals and then i'd come back with more questions and

sometimes tease out the answers and sometimes they didn't and finally i believe it was on my seventh meeting with keith when i said to keith you know i can write about this i can have all these different interviews but i really want to see the pieces of paper he said to me well you know i have a bunch of cardboard boxes in the basement of the we haven't opened them they're from the earlier days we just just put this material in the boxes and of course and you know in the back of my mind i was very excited thinking this is it. came across a tell ex. it was from visit decker see your philips. december ninety five he wrote to the heads of state just before the signing of the single european facts. but started the process of the single market. the crux of the

tallackson is as follows no we don't know what you're going to do but we want you to act you can act one way or another if you choose not to have a single market program then you have given us no choice but perhaps take our business elsewhere. this was a clear fred the year to year we presented sixty percent of western europe's industrial output this was blackmail. why did not a single government say anything about the deck or taylor hicks. or about the other frets that followed. they were elected representatives.

but we felt that this was a betrayal and we wanted to do something about it it's it was important for a bigger public to know about this and we decided to publish a book. and besides collecting data we started to make interviews. and undercover interviews. and finally in spring one thousand nine hundred seven we assembled the results of our investigations and interviews into a report in europe. rescheduled the launch for the big use summit in them so that all the media would be there we were excited as. we had prepared the book launch and half an hour before the first friends started arriving but. very little or no press showed up. so unfortunately our first public events was really not noticed by the pope.

jump to the most ambitious margaret being ruled a key exercise the strengthening of the rule system of multilateral trade. and perhaps most important be establishment of a stronger broadly they. need to organize very. vice started to work on the financial services gats negotiations and that was really the time where i discovered this is we interesting and like we'd like to do that. we've come to the end of the most reaching negotiation ever. negotiators of the hundred seventeen governments and i'm

a cheap to make stuart recent sets. with your approval therefore my gavel the euro why rose could no. internal market that. was becoming a very important market reach market with a high g.d.p. per capita and that when the european union was going outside and negotiate as a bloc they had real power because it was a biggest exporter the biggest importer the biggest foreign investor. but so in britain the trade commission of the opinion was complaining that i was every time he was going to negotiate with the united states in front of him when we see his counterpart here you have your recent gardener system stories and on his back he would have c.e.o.'s of big banks a big insurance companies telling please do that for me please do that for us but when sealion britain was turning his back to see where it's reported. he was

actually having only some minister saying don't do this don't do that and please do that it only but not more and he was really not very happy with you because we discovered that there is a whole world of lobbyists in washington to tell the government what they want in the trade. and we thought this is the way we have to go we have to do something like that the european institutions is asking for it the institution cannot only rely on the information given by the member states and the experts in the finance ministry by the need to get information directly from the the banks or the insurance companies. you know so they're not a point in time european trade commission a so in britain decided ok there is association i'm not really serious about this issue i am going to invite for dinner fourteen see you of the major services companies in europe so it's about big banks big telecom big insurance big dissipations services big transport services big

tourism companies when you take all the different sectors it is actually making about seventy percent of the g.d.p. in europe so we invited the bunch of forty of those. and. after dinner he said well now that you've got some some food by the commission you only saw things you have to do something for me people sometimes think that the commission comes up with ideas out of the blue pushes them it's not a tool traditionally is thirsty for ideas from the actons to hopeless to decide i want to put food. this is where the idea of creating a network of association and companies pushing for the trade in service is viewed by the private sector came up i became a managing director of the open services for.

in general nine hundred ninety nine we had. eleven months to prepare seattle first deputy oh i missed your conference as a creation of this organization in ninety four and the idea was that this meeting is going to lounge the millenium brown that so you britain had so much push for. britain never got to see at all been turned commission had to resign because of the massive fraud several commissions were involved in. seattle the millennium round itself took a completely unexpected turn. i was based in the tail and as a conference was in the sheraton five hundred metres away and i have not been allowed to go out of the hotel because it was one protest or blocking the door by lying on ground and it was

a police officer beside him and asking can i go outside please i would like to go and do my job. i was going to assist his allowance of the c.s. around so that we will enter into a new phase a negotiation for labor is a libra zation of the service. i remember that commissioner let me as been blocking i mean he has been able to enter he's caught but the car couldn't move because of those people they're just there and the policeman say please go away in five metres so that the high v.i.p. here can do its job. many n.g.o.s say that yourself is a secret secret organisation having secret meetings you can commission all the way everything is on a website i mean i am doing my job by contacting the commission with officials responsible for my file if anybody else would like to do the same there's a phone number he's on the in the on the website i'm just doing my job and i don't have anything specific but if the commission has somebody. if it's yes if it is

because it commission is willing to get some information from the surrogacy sectors before negotiating on their behalf because this is what we're talking about trade is done by companies not by n.g.o.s. b c c i knew a dinner at the french if you're a cheese really a very big russel's organize a tree and look at salsa people from different countries different jobs different walks of life who do all interested in. how can europe develop how can we be right things to do wrong and how can i build on what we've already done. i mean coolest thing trying to. think tanks in brussels are feeling a part of the vacuum that exists so that you would have thought that there was no european probably to base. to syntax to step into that vacuum and they are forums in which something like a debate happens inside the brussels bubble. there are national politicians here

european politicians through a civil servant said the dreaded you know it cracks a good diplomat story of business men get their faces from universities will soon see people wondering about bristles easy to read like it really everybody will still want to know where or when i will actually be on to the lot of my job is to keep in contact. think tanks are not themselves lobbyists but they are part of the landscape of lobbying because companies use them to transmit their demands from their their perspectives and all of these are heavily dependent on the industry from the. simple people are sponsoring it microsoft is one of the american business is presently new at microsoft is one of them why not. have had think tanks in brussels that toward our. we funded by the oil industry and

that we're working to sold out about whether there is such a thing as climate change and whether it's important for governments to access to reduce c o two emissions. you can set up research institutes to provide you with. research that's kind of strengthens your position. you can launch a mess if p.r. campaigns and flood the media with your information. what also happens is setting up fake n.g.o.s as happened in the big battle about the software patents law suddenly there were these advertisements from an enduro that's said it was representing small and medium sized companies puts the financial backers of this n.g. over microsoft and it's the people. in the end it's all about money in the christie it's one person one fold but in the brussels baseness it's one euro one fault

the problem is we don't know about the money behind politics we don't know how much is being spent on multi and by whom and on which issues. we need to cut this on the democrats control it has to be made visible what's the role is of lobbying the decision making what is to role of a large company like monsanto or shell. or . what's. going on.

lol.

so one of my first testimonies before the european commission was a very very awakening experience. but. i had one commissioner interrupt me and say well we understand you had a problem in the united states with lobbying activities but he went on to say but you know this is brussels and this is europe we don't have that kind of activity going on here which just kind of floored me that anyone could be so naive. more perhaps the fact of answer was ok i'll concede that a lot of these k. street lobbyists and the professional lobbyists here in the united states may be corrupt however i know every major k. street lobby shop also has a lobby shop in brussels and so we're in your bed europe don't you want to know

if you think that we are so corruptible and so corrupting don't you want to know who we are and who's paying for us and what it is we're trying to get you to do for us. we have to decide to regulate lobbying for a long time in two thousand and four the new commission came in and for the first time ten eastern european countries were part of. the first burns a commission started its in autumn two thousand and four we wrote an open letter to the commission president jose manuel barroso signed by over fifty n.g.o.s.

i would just like to say thank you. that's a very sincere thank you for the confidence which you just voiced and invested in me and i'd like to say to you that i understand this vote of confidence as also implying huge responsibility on my part and we are going to work hard give our all to serve europe to serve the institutions of the european union and to serve all our coast citizens of europe that. the response was a very short formal letter saying we received your letter sent you very interesting . but no substantial response. so we sent a similar letter to all the presidents of the commission. and suddenly towards the end of february we were contacted by the official same color as commissioner from

estonia responsible for administration inviting us to come over. so we went to mr ellis his office which was somewhere in the top of the building. we didn't know what we had to expect from this meeting we had never been approached by a commission so in that sense it was very exciting we welcomed by mr cullison himself and one of his cabinet members. mystical as a brochure and that made us smile it was a lovely plan of god to brussels which was a tongue in cheek but very critical look at industry lobbying in the u. written by eric and me in our our colleagues. when i started does commission and i realize souls are also so weak suspicion surrounding so this isn't making in european union. of course i. say establish for

myself a purpose to reduce these suspicions. he was going to launch this european transparency initiative and we immediately. become political. business. sense for. us. to get on with the street. european commission is going to. dissolve interests represented. the decision making process have to happen in a transparent the commission can see that's important to know. what the interests they represent and against what financial background. of say

efforts to do creates a speech or to make the speech. of course outlined main principles of transparency initiative which will be done. of reactions and if you know without financial transparency we'll never find out who really is behind the campaign stick. a little bit more control on ourselves wouldn't harm our reputation with our voters. transparency must not for closer contact with real life with interest groups or groups without interest thank you commissioner callous and certainly understand this. the european union was considering the european transparency initiative they were looking for some advice as to how some of these achievements happened in the us and as a result i was brought out about half a dozen different times to testify before the european commission in the european

parliament to tell the truth i was very impressed with the same color when i first started working with them in the european commission some callers helped really the whole significance of needing transparency. he was very adamant at first about setting up a mandatory disclosure system full transparency but halfway through the process some colors came up against the political reality and. after free years of struggle and political fight and exhausted commissioner call us and set the stage to finally launch a lobby register a good. with norm. off and on. so i am quite that remarkable moment today. three years ago i proposed to set up the register of lobbyists and in order to enhance the unspent of

sand and legitimacy i don't say i'm evil decision making process and. openness from today. so we brought post voluntary solution because i was i am i am convinced that cease would suit for all expect basins and i think that two days there is a very important moment of cultural change. concerning zeese. aspect of this isn't making in european institutions. some cause introduced a voluntary system against all recommendations by n.g.o.s and the experts this was the best he could get. we have tried for over two years now to find out who had blocked colossus or original intention. where it's other commissioners the commission secretary and the lobbyist themselves.

a month after the financial crisis started in october two thousand and eight. appointed that independent high level group on financial supervision. the group was to work our proposals for the regulation of the financial markets and to find a way out of the financial crisis. eight so-called wise men were appointed to this group. shocked a lot and i must say. i'm a weeding out my easing mccarty leszek culture over each has a purpose for now on this and last nuba. we looked into the independence of this independent group and we found some less honestly things. the lover she is the

co-chair of a financial lobby organization. linked to lehman brothers. greeting to citi group leasing to goldman sachs. mccarty nuber and bunch of always are notorious deregulators. and paris for nonis works to provide financial market intelligence to big banks. free of the eight were directly linked to american banks all of which were directly involved in causing the crisis. which in addition closely into american right wing think tanks like the cato institute this was one of the closest advisors to the bush administration he was also involved in the earlier i think tanks in brussels and poland and the u.k. . all the single of these wise men was in favor of strict regulation now the single one of them was really independence and the effect of these eight

wise men on overcoming the financial crisis was here are the main thing that happened was that a lot of public money was flowing to the banks. is the. ah this whole affair has a horrible sense of deserve all the same financial institutions that were bailed out with taxpayers' money i know making a fortune from greece's misfortune while those same taxpayers are paying the price in deep cuts to their salaries and social services. after twenty years of deregulation and liberalisation suddenly the european union herself was at the edge of being blown up. what is at stake is not

only the european union but also democracy and the future of the values that we hold dear. was a dis what we europeans had wanted. wasn't really naive to have a european dream. is that human nature and yet not only could you always have it but cite some. and we need to make sure that we keep only the good and therefore you need regulation. when you live in a society you half truths because otherwise people are going too fast on the motorway because people are not respected elss because the stronger take this basis

is this is human nature what we have done to go and make sure that we live together these by creating legislation in place by creating an authority that everyone respect.

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