4 December 1997 Edition
Lobbying Europe to save the environment
Robert Allen takes a look at the bureaucrats who lend an ear to profit-seeking industrialists
THIS week the locals in the vicinity of the Glen of the Downs in county Wicklow have prepared a petition for their MEP Nuala Ahern to hand into the EU. A grand gesture to make bureaucrats in Brussels sit up and take notice of the destruction the Irish government want to visit on this beautiful valley just to widen a road.
But these are the same bureaucrats who are presently presiding over grandiose plans for a TransEuropeanNetwork which will speed commerce on its profiteering way along the roads, railways, waterways and airways of Europe. To that end the Brussels and Strasbourg bureaucrats are pouring EU cash into new roads, 12,000 kilometres of them, into expanding high-tech airports, into the unblocking of waterways, into strong, durable bridges, into space-age tunnels and into high-speed trains between Europe's major cities - further disempowering local communities and small businesses.
So is the European Union listening to the European Community? Only to those with business suits, I'm afraid. It is the subtle, behind closed-doors, activity that decides policy.
For some time now the largest transport infrastructure plan in history has been gradually put in place - in Europe. Whose idea was it? It was the suggestion of Europe's top industrialists who decided they needed to improve transportation flow because it was a barrier - to their economic growth.
For some time now the largest transport infrastructure plan in history has been gradually put in place - in Europe.
So, policies that are affecting the lives of millions of people all over Europe were actually put in place by industrialists desperate for money and power, policies that perpetuate the divide between rich and poor, and throw thousands onto the EC's latest mountain of surplus produce - labour.
The industrialists have been able to achieve these seemingly impressive coups because of the effectiveness of their ability, to gain ``extremely privileged access to decision-makers, both at the national and the European level''.
Known as the European Roundtable of Industrialists (ERT) this group of powerful lobbyists came together in 1983 with the sole purpose of manipulating European Union policy. More a political force than a lobby group, the ERT were unique in the history of parliamentary lobbying because they consisted of 45 executives of multi-national companies.
The Corporate Europe Observatory, an Amsterdam based, non profit foundation set up to monitor and report on the activities of European corporations and their lobby groups has described the ERT as:.
``More than just another lobby organisation trying to benefit from the European integration process, the ERT was formed with the express intention of reviving European integration and shaping it to the preferences of European transnational corporations.''
The Observatory's report `Europe Inc: Dangerous Liaisons between EU Institutions and Industry' is one of the first documents in the public domain that seeks to explain why the past decade has seen a shift in the European Union towards policies that have become responsible for the low, painful disintegration of peoples' livelihoods.
Europe Inc describes how corporations, from having had hardly any contact with the European Commission throughout the 70s, appeared to be put links in place overnight. Founded by Umberto Agnelli of Fiat, Wisse Dekker of Philips and Pehr Gyllenhammer of Volvo the ERT wasted no time preparing the ground for an internal market.
When they had achieved that, they moved swiftly onto the second item on their agenda, a flawless transport system. In 1991 a commitment to construct such a system was written into the Maastrict Treaty. Earlier this year the Secretary-General of the ERT, Keith Richardson, told the Europe Inc researchers that a lot of Europe's new infrastructure was in place. ``The Channel Tunnel has been built, the high-speed trains are being built, the crossing from Scandinavia to Denmark is being built...''
Europe was being built alright, but it wasn't fast enough for the ERT. Just before the 1992 Summit in Edinburgh, the ERT wrote to heads of state calling for additional funding for the Trans-European Network. The EU leaders obliged. An investment fund worth seven billion ecu was set up.
Since then an estimated budget of 400 billion ecu has aided more than 150 projects, at a pace that most people are oblivious to. But the environmental damage is now becoming obvious all over Europe as activists attempt to stop further destruction In 1995 Greenpeace Switzerland estimated that the improved transportation network would contribute a 15%-18% increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Other groups announced the imminent destruction of around 60 natural sites of national and European importance.
Michael Smurfit is the sole Irish presence on the ERT, but you can be sure he's not there for the wildbird soup, deer cutlets in apricot sauce and chestnut icecream. Give him a call. Before you ask him where he got his mandate from to speak on behalf of the Irish people, ask him about the environmental destruction the network is causing and the resulting social dislocation that will ultimately result from a homogenised Europe. In fact why don't you ask him if he'll take a petition in for you. He knows all the right people.
Europe Inc is published by Corporate Europe Observatory, c/o A SEED Europe Office, PO Box 92066, 1090 AB Amsterdam, The Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected]
THIS week the locals in the vicinity of the Glen of the Downs in county Wicklow have prepared a petition for their MEP Nuala Ahern to hand into the EU. A grand gesture to make bureaucrats in Brussels sit up and take notice of the destruction the Irish government want to visit on this beautiful valley just to widen a road.
But these are the same bureaucrats who are presently presiding over grandiose plans for a TransEuropeanNetwork which will speed commerce on its profiteering way along the roads, railways, waterways and airways of Europe. To that end the Brussels and Strasbourg bureaucrats are pouring EU cash into new roads, 12,000 kilometres of them, into expanding high-tech airports, into the unblocking of waterways, into strong, durable bridges, into space-age tunnels and into high-speed trains between Europe's major cities - further disempowering local communities and small businesses.
So is the European Union listening to the European Community? Only to those with business suits, I'm afraid. It is the subtle, behind closed-doors, activity that decides policy.
For some time now the largest transport infrastructure plan in history has been gradually put in place - in Europe. Whose idea was it? It was the suggestion of Europe's top industrialists who decided they needed to improve transportation flow because it was a barrier - to their economic growth.
For some time now the largest transport infrastructure plan in history has been gradually put in place - in Europe.
So, policies that are affecting the lives of millions of people all over Europe were actually put in place by industrialists desperate for money and power, policies that perpetuate the divide between rich and poor, and throw thousands onto the EC's latest mountain of surplus produce - labour.
The industrialists have been able to achieve these seemingly impressive coups because of the effectiveness of their ability, to gain ``extremely privileged access to decision-makers, both at the national and the European level''.
Known as the European Roundtable of Industrialists (ERT) this group of powerful lobbyists came together in 1983 with the sole purpose of manipulating European Union policy. More a political force than a lobby group, the ERT were unique in the history of parliamentary lobbying because they consisted of 45 executives of multi-national companies.
The Corporate Europe Observatory, an Amsterdam based, non profit foundation set up to monitor and report on the activities of European corporations and their lobby groups has described the ERT as:.
``More than just another lobby organisation trying to benefit from the European integration process, the ERT was formed with the express intention of reviving European integration and shaping it to the preferences of European transnational corporations.''
The Observatory's report `Europe Inc: Dangerous Liaisons between EU Institutions and Industry' is one of the first documents in the public domain that seeks to explain why the past decade has seen a shift in the European Union towards policies that have become responsible for the low, painful disintegration of peoples' livelihoods.
Europe Inc describes how corporations, from having had hardly any contact with the European Commission throughout the 70s, appeared to be put links in place overnight. Founded by Umberto Agnelli of Fiat, Wisse Dekker of Philips and Pehr Gyllenhammer of Volvo the ERT wasted no time preparing the ground for an internal market.
When they had achieved that, they moved swiftly onto the second item on their agenda, a flawless transport system. In 1991 a commitment to construct such a system was written into the Maastrict Treaty. Earlier this year the Secretary-General of the ERT, Keith Richardson, told the Europe Inc researchers that a lot of Europe's new infrastructure was in place. ``The Channel Tunnel has been built, the high-speed trains are being built, the crossing from Scandinavia to Denmark is being built...''
Europe was being built alright, but it wasn't fast enough for the ERT. Just before the 1992 Summit in Edinburgh, the ERT wrote to heads of state calling for additional funding for the Trans-European Network. The EU leaders obliged. An investment fund worth seven billion ecu was set up.
Since then an estimated budget of 400 billion ecu has aided more than 150 projects, at a pace that most people are oblivious to. But the environmental damage is now becoming obvious all over Europe as activists attempt to stop further destruction In 1995 Greenpeace Switzerland estimated that the improved transportation network would contribute a 15%-18% increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Other groups announced the imminent destruction of around 60 natural sites of national and European importance.
Michael Smurfit is the sole Irish presence on the ERT, but you can be sure he's not there for the wildbird soup, deer cutlets in apricot sauce and chestnut icecream. Give him a call. Before you ask him where he got his mandate from to speak on behalf of the Irish people, ask him about the environmental destruction the network is causing and the resulting social dislocation that will ultimately result from a homogenised Europe. In fact why don't you ask him if he'll take a petition in for you. He knows all the right people.
Europe Inc is published by Corporate Europe Observatory, c/o A SEED Europe Office, PO Box 92066, 1090 AB Amsterdam, The Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected]