with mike's cancer the no holds barred look at the global financial headlines kaiser report on our. mission to free credit taishan free. for charges free. free. free. free. download free blog care to video for your media project a free media oh god r.t. dot com. every six months there was an e.u. summit and every six months that your team it's just a few days before. location and date were kept confidential the booking was made two years in advance. and left behind was a clear message to the following you summit on the heads of governments a few days later. adopt the single market the monetary union 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 our picture confirms by an american scholar stepping into the topic maria green call's 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 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 steve had the answers and sometimes he 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 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 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. murray a green calls came across a tell x. . it was from visit decker see your phillips. in december nine hundred eighty 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 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 telex. 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 important for a bigger public to know. 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 seventy we assembled the results of our investigations and interviews into a report europe. rescheduled the book launch for the big use some of 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 friend started to write . very little or no press or showed up. so unfortunately our first public events that's really not noticed as part of. the job of the players down this road block a very groove a key exercise the strengthening of the rules based system of multilateral crate.

and perhaps most important the establishment of a stronger broadly based well trained organizer. i started to work on the financial side assist gats negotiations and that would remain the time when i discovered this it's just like we'd like to do that. we've come to the end of the most far reaching trade negotiation that we're. going to go see eight years of the hundred and seventeen governments and i'm a cheap to make stuart race excess. with your approval therefore my gavel to your acquiring does continue. the internal

market of europe was becoming any very important market rich market was 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 european union was complaining that i with every time he was going to negotiate with the united states in front of him you will see is counterpart here your every office and gardener observes three or four years 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 this report was it was actually having only some ministers 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 and 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 these institutions cannot only rely on the information given by the member states and the expert in the finance ministry is why they need to get the information directly from the the bank that the insurance company. you know so then at a point in time european commission or 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 decisions 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 invite. a bunch of forty of those. and.

after dinner i said well now that you've got some some food by the commission you owe me something you have to do something for me people sometimes think that the commission comes up with ideas out of the blue with pushes them it's not so a tool the commission is thirsty for ideas from the cannot make acton's to help us to decide what to put food which is in the interests of europe. this is where the idea of creating a network of association and companies pushing for the trade in service is used by the private sector came up and became managing director of the open services firm. in general to nine we had. eleven months to prepare seattle first every cio i mean it's your conference us as

a creation of this organization imagine at four and the idea was that this meeting is going to lounge is amazing i'm brown that's so you know britain had so much push for. britain never got to see how tall the inter commission had to resign because of the massive fraud several commissioners were involved in. the millennium round itself took a completely unexpected turn. i was based in the hotel and there's 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 looking to buy right. 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 there we will enter into a new phase in negotiation oliver is

a libra zation of the service. i remember that commissioner let me ask been blocked i mean yes we name for to enter his car but the car couldn't move because of those people they're just there and the policeman said 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 everything is on their 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 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 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. this is

the annual dinner it's the friends of europe which is really a very big brussels organization and lots and lots of people from 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 close build on what we've already done. the inclusive thing trying. to introduce it in brussels are you feeling a part of the vacuum that exists now that you live with that there is no european probably to greece. to syntax to step into that vacuum and the forums in which something like a debate happens inside the brussels board. there are national politicians here european politicians through a civil servant said the dreaded you know it creates idea. department through

a businessman and get their faces to the universe into its real souls that people are wondering about bristles is exhibit a like it really everybody will still want to know. when i will actually be on to the moderate my job is to keep it come to. 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 industry from the. simple being the sponsoring it microsoft is one of the american business presently do it mike yourself is one of them why not. have had think tanks in brussels that were directly funded by the oil industry and that were working to sort out about whether there are such a thing as climate change and whether it's important for governments to access to it you seem to emissions. 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 representing small and medium sized companies puts the financial backers of this and she over microsoft and is happy. in the end it's all about money in the crossing it's one person one vote but in the brussels basis 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 the and by whom and on which issues. we need to put this on the

democrats control it has to be made visible want to role is of lobbying in the decision making what is the role of a large company like monsanto or shell. new year's celebrations on the move without the traditional t.v. all festive food surprising meetings and new adventures stories of love found and love lost our russians teach foreigners to celebrate them biggest holiday of the year from moscow to st petersburg by train over new year there may be miracles. choose your language. because we know if they sell some.

treatments that the consensus here could. choose to opinions that you think are great to. choose the stories that impact your life choose to access to often. 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 person 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 office of the same color as commissioner from estonia responsible for administration inviting us to come over. so we went to mr callouses 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 were welcomed by mr cullison himself and one of his cabinet members. is the colors had

a brochure and that made us smile it was a lovely planet guide to brussels which was a tongue in cheek but very critical look at industry lobbying in the you written by eric and me in our our colleagues. when i started as mr ace and commission and i really sold out several says so weak suspicion surrounding said decision making in european union. of course i. say establish for myself a purpose to reduce the suspicions. told her step he was going to launch this european transparency initiative and we immediately saw that these fruits are political. as an outside business he also had a clear sense for how the. process. to get on with the lobby in the street. european commission is going to its that's

activities of interests representatives are legitimate and valuable input into decision making process have to happen in a transparent manner the commission can see this these important to know. that these are 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 and of course. a lot of controversial reactions on if you know without financial transparency we'll never find out who really is behind the campaign sticked. a little bit more control on ourselves wouldn't harm our reputation with our voters but it's not the transparency must not for closer contact with real life with interest groups or

groups without interest thank you commissioner callous and certainly understand this. 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 year. being commissioned in 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 full transparency but halfway through the process some colors came up against the political reality and. after free years of struggle

and political fight an exhausted commissioner answered the stage to finally launch a lobby register a good. with norm. or off and on. so i am quite that remarkable moment today. three years ago i proposed to set up the register of lobbyists in order to enhance transparency and and legitimacy and i want you to see in making process and. openness from today. so we proposed voluntary solution because i was i am i am convinced that cease would suit for all expect basins and i think that today's is a very important moment of cultural change. concerning zeese. aspect of this is in 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. one month after the financial crisis started in october two thousand and eight. appointed 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 to lower than i must say or unloading my easing mccarty nashik culture over each recipient as found on this and last nuclear . we looked into the independence of this independent group and we found some mesan issue things. the lover she is the co-chair of a financial lobby organisation. linked to lehman brothers. reading to citi group leasing to goldman sachs. accounting 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 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 i think tanks in brussels and poland and the u.k. . other similarities wise man was in favor of strict regulation now the single one of them was really independence and defectors. is it wise man on overcoming the financial crisis was here on the main thing that happened last night a lot of public money was flowing to the banks. missive. 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 by 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 that this what we europeans had once it. wasn't really naive to have a european dream. in the human nature and yet not only could you always have it but cite somewhere.

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 in a respected elss because the stronger take this case is. this is a human nature what we have done to go and make sure that we live together is by creating new just range of base by creating an authority that everyone respects.

i never knew adam lanza person but i was in the same high school as that he was younger than me just a little bit younger. i always thought he was different i always interested me funny he rarely talks and you know he was a shy kid. i don't know of anyone who is friends with him i also don't know of

anyone who is particularly mean to the what i do know is that it was very clear that this person was not like everybody else. can't imagine the level of mental illness that would be present to murder children. america's you know so many go on this there would be an american bond every. surely with a gun. i think for kids growing up in this environment is good for them at an early age to least see the gun and respect it because they need to know what kind of damage it can do. this is our first task as a society. keeping our children safe. this is how we will be judged.