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 richards and. 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 up out there so i can have all these different interviews but i really want to see the pieces of paper said to me well you know i have a bunch of cardboard boxes in the basement of the e.r.c. we haven't opened them they're from the earlier days we just we 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.

really a green calls came across a tell x. . 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 fact but started the process of the single market. the crux of the tallackson is as follows you know 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 two you were presented sixty percent of western europe's industrial output this was black.

why did not a single government say anything about the deck or taylor hicks. or about the other fred stuff followed. they were elected representatives. but we felt that this was a betrayal and we wanted to do something about it and 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. undercover interviews. finally in spring one thousand nine hundred seven we assembled the results of our investigations and interviews into a report europe. was scheduled to launch for the big east summit in them so that all the media would be here we were excited as. we had

prepared the book launch and half an hour before the first friend started arriving . very little or no press showed up. so unfortunately our first public events was really not noticed by the pope. jumped into the latest down this road block a very groove a key exercise the strengthening of the rule based system of multilateral crate. and perhaps most simple the establishment of a strong broadly. well trained to organize very. nice outfit to work on the financial services gets negotiations. that was

really the time where i discovered this is really interesting and like we'd like to do that. we've come to the most reaching legal situation. the negotiators in seventeen governments an. extraordinary success. with europe group and therefore my gavel to europe. internal market of you was becoming any 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 a real power because it was a biggest exporter the biggest importer the biggest foreign investor. but so in britain the trade commission of the european union was complaining that i with every time he was going to negotiate with the united states in front of him we see

his counterpart here you have your recent garden party observed through the stories and on his back he would have c.e.o.'s of big bangs a big insurance company telling please do that for me please do that for us but winterland britain was turning his back to see where its report was it 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 you know. we discovered that there is a whole world of lobbyists in washington to tell their government what they want in the trade negotiations. 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 easy you can see to sion cannot only rely on the information given by the member states and the expert in the finance ministry is why they need to get information directly from the the banks of the insurance company. you know so then at a point in time. european commission

a soul in britain decided ok there was association i'm not really serious about this issue i am going to invite for dinner fourteen c.-u. 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 the commission is thirsty for ideas from cannot make acton's to help us to decide what 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 and became managing director of the open services for . relief. in general to nine we had. eleven months to prepare seattle first. ministerial conference after the creation of this organisation imagine at four and the idea was that this meeting is going to lounge the millenium brown that. britain had so much push for. britain never got to see how to turn commission had to resign because of the massive fraud several commissions were involved in. the millennium round it solved. completely unexpected. i was based in the hilton

hotel and there's a conference was in the sheraton five hundred meters away and i have not been allowed to go out of the hotel because it was one protest or looking to buy light rail 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 us allow cell to see us around so that we will enter into a new phase a negotiation oliver is a libra zation of the service. i remember that commissioner let me as been blocking i mean he has been ample to enter his car but the car couldn't move because of those people they're just there and no policeman say please go away in five metres so that the v.i.p.'s here can do his 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 the 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 as their phone number is on the in the world on the website i'm just doing my job and i don't have anything specific but is a commission has some relationship with the surface because it commission is willing to get some information from the services sector is before negotiating on their behalf because this is what we're talking about trade is done by companies not by n.g.o.s. this is the annual dinner if the friends of europe which is really a very big brussels organization and lots and lots of people some different countries different jobs different walks of life who do all interested in. how can you develop with the right things to do wrong and how can i build on what we've already done. the inclusive thing trying.

think tanks in brussels are feeling a part of the vacuum that exists at the e.u. level that there is no european probably to case. to syntax to step into that vacuum and they are the forums in which something like a debate happens inside the brussels bubble. there are national politicians here european politician or a serious civil servant said the dreaded you know it creates a good department store a businessman get their faces from universities will still see people wondering about bristles it's a bit like it really everybody will still want to know. when i will simply be on to moderate 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 hence all of these are heavily dependent on industry funding. several people are sponsoring it microsoft is one of

them and maybe can reason as he said presently do it mike yourself is one of the why not. i have had think tanks in brussels that were directly from the by the oil industry and that were working to sort out about sweaters or such a thing as climate change and whether it's important for governments to have access to it you seem to emissions. or. you can set up research institutes to provide you with. research that kind of strengthens your position. you can launch message 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. percent

ing small and medium sized companies but the financial backers of this n.g. over microsoft and disappear. in the end it's all about money in the ocracy it's one person one fault 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 lobbying by whom and on which issues. we need to put this on the democrats control it has to be made visible what's the role is of lobbying the decision making what is the role of a large company like monsanto or shall.

we speak your language of the law and not at the. school music programs and documentaries in spanish what matters to you breaking news a little tonnage of angola's stories. you hear. detroit all teach spanish find out more visit i to allahabad all tito it's calm. wealthy british style it's time to. market why not. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with max cons. for

a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to kaiser report on our. download the official application to choose your language stream quality and enjoy your favorite. if you're away from your television just doesn't matter now with your mobile device you can watch on t.v. anytime anywhere. so one of my first testimony is before the european commission was a very very awakening experience. 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 that perhaps the fact of answer was ok all 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 how to regulate lobbying for a long time. before the new commission came in and for the first time ten. eastern

european countries were part of. the first berzerk mission starts in autumn two thousand and four we wrote an open letter to the commission president. 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 have received your letter sent you very interesting. no substantial response. so we sent a signal letter to all the presidents of the commission. and suddenly towards the end of february we were contacted by the same color as commissioner from estonia responsible for administration inviting us to come over. so we went to mr collis 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. it was very exciting were welcomed by mr cullison himself

and one of his cabinet members and in his hand is the colors of the brochure and that made him smile it was a lovely plan it got to brussels which was a tongue in cheek but a very critical look at industry lobbying in the u. written by eric and me in our our colleagues. when i started as mr mason commission and i really souls at services so weak suspicion surrounding said decision making in european union. of course i. say establish for myself a purpose do a little to reduce the suspicions. told a step he was going to launch this european transparency initiative and we immediately saw that these who serve because political opportunity. as an outsider to brussels business he also had a clear sense for how the ordinary citizen brussels. and

some colors to get on with the lobby in the street. european commission is going to its that's activities of interests representatives are legitimate and offer valuable input into the decision making process but sinks have to happen in a transparent manner the commission can see that is that these important to no interest representatives are what the interests they represent and against what financial background. of say efforts to do creates a speech or to make the speech and. this of course outlined main principles of transparency initiative which should be done and it was of course met . with the excitement of controversial reactions and if you know without financial transparency we'll never find out who really is behind the campaign sticked lip a little. that's more control on ourselves wouldn't harm our reputation with our

voters that us but it cannot be transparency must not for closer contact with real life with interest groups or groups without interest thank you commissioner callous can certainly understand best. when 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 and the european parliament to tell the truth i was very impressed with the same color as when i first started working with him in the european commission some callers helped really usher the whole significance of needing transparency. he was very adamant at first about setting up a mandatory disclosure system having full transparency but halfway through the

process some colors came up against the political reality and. after free years of struggle and political fights and exhausted commission and set the stage to finally launch a lobby register a good. would moon moon or off and on. so quite that remarkable moment today. three years ago i proposed to set up a register of lobbyists in order to enhance transparency and and legitimacy and i would say you decision making process and that is your openness from today. so we proposed voluntary solution because i was i am comments that cease would suit for all expect basins and i think that today's is a very important moment of. altschul change i am also an easy seven

cease aspect of this isn't making in european institutions. and colors introduced a voluntary system against all recommendations by n.g.o.s and experts this was the best he could get. we have tried for over two years now to find out who had blocked callouses or a general intention. where it's other commissioners the commission secretary and the lobbyist themselves. one month after the financial crisis started in october two thousand and eight. appointed the 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. struck to lower share and i must say that on a weeding out my easing mccarty nashik culture of each recipient as found on this and last nuba. we looked into the independence of this independent group and we found some s. honest and things. the legacy is the co-chair of a financial lobby organization. to lehman brothers. gooding to citi group leasing to goldman sachs. accounting nuber and bunch of always are notorious deregulators. and paris fernand this 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 it's closely linked to 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 and think tanks in brussels and poland and the u.k. . of a single of these wise men who 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 zero the main thing that happened last a lot of public money was flowing to the banks. as if. 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 where 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. it

is in the human nature and young not only can you always have a bite sized summer. and we need to make sure that we keep only the good and therefore you need religion. when you live in a society you have groups because otherwise people are going too fast on the motorway because people have no respect and elss because the stronger take this basis is this is a human nature what we have done to go and make sure that we live together is by creating legislation in place by creating an authority that everyone respect. the.

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your language. to kill it oh if you're going to say sell some of. the consensus get to. choose the opinions that invigorating a good. chance to stories get in the. chains access to your office.