entire industry operating in the shadow often in secrecy and very confidential. a. little. bit this industry has to lobby in history. to. win the seat every person they are going to take care of. it. are now. sitting in there twenty years now i've been trying to uncover. who are these people who are pulling the strings for the e.u. decisions. and how do they operate. and hoarded into the huge political. third. third third earth's surface.

oh yes good evening. i'd like to speak to him please. note that no well listen i'd like to to leave a message for tomorrow i just wanted to confirm the meeting. that we have fixed. my name is mr kenny's best calculates kidney are and this. is from the from the european services for the s.s. this and we have a meeting tomorrow but i didn't get time today to to go through as i wanted to. is it ok. thank you very much.

well dressed as a small city it's a. city but that's. when you know a bit further about it's brussels is within the place. this is where the this this takes place this is where they just station is. i think they were the figure is around eighty percent of all its leaves. which are. touching direct life of european citizens is actually initiated here thus. if you look at plus the epicenter of political power in europe you see the european commission on the one side next to the council of the e.u. . and all around that's where you find lobby offices most of them belonging to big multinational corporations and you find them also in all of the side streets all

over to the european parliament and beyond. to finance a good lobby headquarters of large corporations to find industry lobby groups and their lobby operations being been orchestrated from offices in that area. two thousand five hundred lobby structures are based in brussels fifteen thousand lobbyists the second biggest industry in the world only washington d.c. is bigger. so all of that european union legislation this is complicated it goes through a lot of stages it always starts with the european commission they take a new initiatives from the for legislation for policies and then it goes through the institutions the parliaments the council of ministers. and from the moments that the european commission takes is very first step. in developing new

illustration only policies industry wants to be there to influence its. i mean the researchers have said i really want to have the possibility to go.

for the private sector where i would decide myself. what i wait to sell it that much more. something for me. and then i just tell the business around the open situation. i started. to feel over just. you know we. everybody believe the bad. sort of old may. the institutions

and institutions in the european union is about the commission the council of ministers and the european parliament but there is also. another well behind that which is how to influence the institutions to make a text to give a good idea to. propose amendments to trying to fine tune the text depending on the interest of the people to push more. blubbing is it was originally envisioned is a good thing no lawmaker can be an expert in all the fields that he or she has to deal with and so they rely on other people giving them advice. but lobbying went from their field of expertise into what is

more properly called hired guns so you now have people who may not be an expert in anything they're dealing with but they're paid for by clients who want them to pursue specific objectives what makes them so affective is many of these hired guns will be what what we call revolving door abusers and these will be people who were in governments then come out of government and are hired by the very same people that had business pending before them when they were in government and the mid ninety's we had come across so many examples of your policies that were basically captured by industry and industry lobbying was felt was really a fundamental problem here the influence of industries is excessive and we decided to set up a group to document examples and to start developing this. it's rollback this

excessive influence that's how it started this. one day and then the summer of one thousand nine hundred. s. . and it came from the south of france. from the local environmental group. this group was fighting against a motorway that was planned to go through a valley in the area they lived in the valley of us a collage of cleave very important to the area a very beautiful area and. the group asked if we knew more about the role of the european union and and specifically the european commission in this motorway project. so we started looking into this and we discovered that this motorway project was part of something called the trans

european networks. the transfer p. and that works was the biggest infrastructure projects in history with the estimated budget of four hundred billion euro. friends from sweden came up with another detail there was an influential lobby group behind this and they asked us you know about a year to the european round table of industrialists. i know. i started digging for more information about the year t. . i went to our archives and i didn't find anything. i started diving into the alien world of the business press newspapers like the financial times the economist german business newspapers and we found a reference to a new report that had been published shortly before called reshaping europe. but some of the rather interesting and we order to head. reports at the european

the round table at corners. i wrote on the request mentioning us the purpose of research. i did not believe i would get anything but a few days later a big brown envelope arrived in my letter box. please booklets are inside missing links missing networks and receiving your. take the first two publications going through them something strange about them somehow they look so familiar. euro tunnel. scam link. here in these corridor. i go to the archive. of. the t.n. projects by the commission. i go through the papers

compare them back and forth. for the striking similarity. of projects are almost identical. question seems to have copy pasted the unity proposals. live. plus. live. live.

live. live leak live live . his power was the envy of emperors. he had good reason to trust no one. his body was found on the floor of his huge empty house. but did he die of natural causes. the mystery of stalin's death on oxy. for some people extreme cold is the chilling threat to life or imminent death it's

a cooling if you look you can see that the water evaporates and my body feels really warm now this is good for you. they plunge into icy water to make themselves stronger you can't get used to the cold it but you can tolerate it and you can struggle with. people of snow and ice victims of frost. surviving the cold. now i'm really curious reshaping europe. meeting in doubling is mentioned forty five c.e.o.'s all from multinational companies representing billions of euros of turnover. companies like fiat's the farce british petroleum kirkstall nestlé siemens show unit lever and many others all of them supporting what is in this book. the all source free c.e.o.'s.

showroom or no. hummer and this is decker. living in the netherlands i knew this a decker he was the head of philips one of the largest companies in the country. good enough i was to have a volvo a car producing company. and show me nor was the head of lee honest us or a very large french automotive national. so the authors of this report were free c.e.o. . from some of the biggest companies in europe it was a political manifesto written by these industry leaders.

it was stunning was that these two three c.e.o.'s words would sit down and actually write. a report that was a detail set of recommendations for how to change the to the face of europe. simply securing our rights i finished my job in the commission in april nineteenth one thousand. and ninety decided that maybe suppressed place is actually where the money is so i went to europe in banking federation. and i started to look to be an open east. expert. when. it comes to i have worked

a. long time nine years in europe and banking for duration and i started also to discover. an additional word to europe which was. international trade. commission. that interfere with any current. thank you for freedom. but you see you know our industries. yeah i mean if you obviously need to have a lot of contacts you probably find a figure of one hundred person which i will keep in mind. that you feel very secure a commitment. i mean my job i describe it as a network as a fascinating time as an ambassador and from want to be an ambassador you have to know who you have to talk. to i can say that i would present around eighty percent

of all services exporters and investors. as a turnover. let's say fifty percent to sixty g.p. of european union. i don't really believe in two. it's part of it but most of the time you will provoke chants and then it's going to be up to you to see the opportunity when the chance. in december one thousand nine hundred three the n.-g. o. network i worked for had its annual meeting and the meeting was to take place in brussels. we were very impressed by what we had found out about a year to heat and its influence that time there were no academic studies to show to anything about the power of these large multinational companies on new policies . we decided that this was the perfect opportunity to call for attention on the

role of the year to. say. well we brainstormed about what to do and we decided to do something a little provoking. the night before we wrote a press release and in the early morning we went to the ear to the office. and one of us rang the doorbell and told the secretary that's here's a student looking for some documents and when the door opened we all ran up the stairs quickly and we all managed to get into the office that way. i remember very well i was at some mitri. in the morning so i think it was mid morning i came into the office and found banners hanging around the office and lots of strange faces around so i said what's what's happening will somebody please tell

me what's going on and they said oh we've come to occupy your building and. possibly they wanted a confrontation possibly they wanted me to ring up the police have the police come in through the mail but didn't seem to be a good idea at all indeed finally some reason but we had an office lunch so i took everybody my people out to lunch and left and then. we were surprised by the reaction that we got from the sea they went off into a room and talked about it apparently and decided to leave. and what we did was using your t. is priceless we faxed the press release to the international media. we expected that's the occupation of this very shadowy evil to very powerful business lobby group which really interested media. so things went a little bit differently. i think we talked to one newspaper and there was

a radio program that was interested and for the rest it was silent. and we didn't know when the t.v. stuff would come back. that's all the tables that were position papers and reports lying around but it was also all very neatly organized archive everything sort it's . so we decided to move to would be fast and copy as much as possible. in those documents where letters from the your team and demands from the year to two european governments and to european commission and i would responses. and it really showed the degree of access that they had an incredible influence and so that was it was clear from those documents.

so when we tracked back the history of that your team we found that the start in the early days. from the commission. the the member of the commission who was really keen was a man called a belgian called steve. he had diplomatic business background and he could see the need he said if i want to talk to european industry who do i talk to. what i've heard out of the commission over in just the insufficient gone in with the commission. the economy grow. richer existed reservation with. the fetish is of interest i would say i know for sure. but not at the level of the. sponsor for individual business and i felt that we were missing. and so we

decided to set up. a group of industrious rich to be guaranteed yesterday so as to have the capacity to listen to the c.e.o.'s. there were and yelling who run fia finished in a booth with a deck or who rammed phillips another that. was paid guillen how to run a volvo in sweden people from siemens and the big german chemical companies the french spaniards then the british. small number of people who ran. the biggest companies in europe were ready to talk about big policy issues with those people who were in charge of the european government. and then when they made. a visionary president of the commission by the role

they find dillo is thinking in entirely the same terms so why don't they get together and pool their ideas that's a breakthrough read. i'm a facilitator that's probably a good a good way to put me as a description not being is a little is. understood as a bit of the debt you with but it's just networking just contact between human beings. and we're going to make up. the world is very small actually as a people we have to reach out actually at the end of the day it's becoming smaller and smaller if you know the right person actually you know it's going to be about a hundred person keep us and the rest. moving around in brussels talking

about. the crazed companies are global. and therefore the american companies the chinese companies the indian companies you taiwanese companies are actually my my allies we are working together for the same purpose which is to open up the market. in one thousand nine hundred three was the year when the european union was born. to us and have been sold as a political project. of these letters that we had found in december point is in a totally different direction. again a master plan behind it. like with a t m projects. written by the iraqi. prefer the

year t. and the european commission were meeting on a regular basis. turn was amazingly jovial and informal. all that went on in complete secrecy. and the european commission work hand in hand. and nine hundred eighty four missing links was published and immediately after the european commission set up a working group with the iraqi on exactly this topic in general you might. hundred eighty five this is decker seal phillips presents his europe in one thousand nine hundred and his action plan for the single market. ten days later chuckle or new president of the european commission gives

a speech about the single market in the european parliament which sounds like the echo of decker speech done to me in india. in june one thousand nine hundred five your cofield vice president of the commission publishes the famous single market white paper a copy paste of the. old .

speed. with. the. long. run. victims multiply here each day. it's very profitable to invest in colombia.

it is a very high return on investment. but i've been working in this area for thirty years and i've always had to pay the armed groups at a meeting that is not a managers who change their name and strategy but just tell the same murderous. high ranking suspects you know coming. pretty upset on that mr president. to president putin. both of you. i won't give an interview i'm sorry but no. investigation is a dead. end and says sick and stop your bullshit and keep quiet or else you'll suffer the consequences. even if they're your bodyguards to watch themselves because the same goes for them. regards from synch

i've never heard of such a case as ours are so much money and gold has still so many gifts. for all the gold in colombia on our t.v. . life chavez the body of venezuela's longtime leader is said to be him.