those 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 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 and keith 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.

green colson came across or 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 to your to you we presented sixty percent of western europe's industrial . this was blackmail. why did

not a single government say anything about the day curtail acts. 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 about this and we decided to publish a book. besides collecting dots and we started to make interviews. undercover interviews. finally in spring one thousand nine hundred seventy we assembled the results of our investigations and introduced into a report europe. rescheduled the launch for the big east summit in them so that all the media would be there we were excited as. we had

prepared the book launch and how from all before the first friends started arriving . very little or no press showed up. so unfortunately our first public events that's really not noticed by the pope. jumped into the latest down this road block of a rule of a key exercise the strength of the rule based system of multilateral crate. and perhaps most simple the establishment of a stronger broadly based welding trade organizer. i started to work on the financials. this is gats negotiations and 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 negotiation. the negotiators in seventeen governments and the achieved an extraordinary success . with your approval there my gavel to europe. the internal market of you 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 would 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 observed through the 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 winterland britain was turning his back to see where this report was 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 you know. we discovered that there is a whole world of lobbyists in washington to tell the 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 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 information directly from the the banks of the company. you know. so then at

a point in time european commission a soul in britain decided ok there was association of really serious about this issue i am going to invite for dinner fourteen. 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 commission is thirsty for ideas from the actons 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 if you use by the private sector came up i became managing director of the open services for. the for. in general in atlanta nine we had. eleven months to prepare seattle first. a 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 inter commission had to resign because of the massive fraud several commissions were involved in. seattle

millennium road itself took a completely unexpected turn. i was facing the in its own 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 around 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 for the c.s. around so that we will enter into a new phase a negotiation for liveries eight livres ation of service. i remember that commissioner let me as been blocking i mean he has been able to enter his car but the car couldn't move because of those people there just there are no police and say please go away in five meters 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 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 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 if the french if you're a teacher is really a very brief brussels organization 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. and how close build on what we've already done . i recall is

a thing to try to. think things 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. the 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 or european politician or a serious civil servant said the dreaded you know it creates a good department store of businessmen get their faces through universities will still see people wondering about bristles easy to read like it really if you would be told to want to not read it when i would simply be to eat a 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 used them to transmit their demands from their their perspectives and hence all of these are heavily

dependent on the industry from the. simple people are sponsoring it microsoft is one of american business 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 party or oil industry and that were working to sold out about sweaters or such thing as climate change and whether it's important for governments to have 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 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 said it was representing

small and medium sized companies but still financial backers of this entry hole were microsoft and the people. in the end it's all about money in the uk risky it's one person one fold but in the brussels baseness it's one euro one faults 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 put 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 hole or shell. these are de she faces a freedom fighter. and. they're ready

to clean up a new store. and bring new liberty anytime. salut play free fall. off. to be reduced to a. syrian diary an archie.

so one of my first testimonies 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 naïve. 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 burst of 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 . no substantial response.

so we sent the same a 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 we welcomed by mr himself and one of his cabinet members. in this and 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 a very critical look at industry lobbying in the u. written by eric and me in our our colleagues. when i started the. commission and i

really sold out several says so be suspicion surrounding said decision making in european uno. of course i. say establish for myself a purpose to reduce the suspicions. told a step he was going to launch this european transparency initiative and we immediately saw it at the political. business he also had a clear sense for how the. process. in the street. european commission is going to activities of interests representatives. of decision making process have to happen in a transparent manner the commission can see this these important to know.

what the interests they represent and against what financial background. say efforts to do creates a speech or to make the speech. of course outlined main principles of transparency initiative which should be done and. of controversial 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 that. transparency must not for closer contact with real life with interest groups or groups without interest thank you commissioner callous and certainly understand. 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 it was brought out about half a dozen different times to testify before the year. being commissioner 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 and exhausted commissioner call us and set the stage to finally launch a lobby register a good. wood mill known or often or. so

quite that remarkable moment today. three years ago i proposed to set up a register of lobbyists in order to enhance don't spend sand and legitimacy on our own sam we'll decisionmaking 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 two days there is a very important moment of cultural change. concerning zeese. aspect of this is making in european institutions. some colors 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 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 are unloading my easing mccarty leszek belzer over each recipient as found on this and last nuba. we looked into

the independence of this independent group and we found some s. honestly thinks. the lover she is the co-chair of a financial lobby organisation. limb to limb and brothers. reading to citi group leasing to goldman sachs. currently 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 the effect of the. is it wise man on overcoming the financial crisis was still 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 well 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. in the human nature and yet not only could you always have it but cite some. kind 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 the respected elss because the stronger take the states this is. this is a human nature what we have done to go and make sure that we live together is by creating it is lation base by creating an authority that everyone respect her.

they've been living this way since the seventeenth century. their rituals are strict. their communities are recently. they clearly distinguish between their home and the alien. and guard their family in three treasure.

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