Brussels on the ground: European Bubble
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«There is relative transparency inside the bubble, points out the young American. You know the person, the donors, the different position - everyone understands each other really well». Tom Huddleston, Policy Analyst. Yiorgos Vassalos, Corporate Europe Observatory
«It is clear that most of the experts come from governments. There is industry participation in 32% of all expert groups.
We are aware of many examples where industry representatives are more than the half of the members of an Expert Group and this is on very controversial and critical issues such as textile, biotechnology and climate change. In this cases, the European Commission is formulating policies based almost wholly on the advice of those stakeholders who have a direct commercial interest The lack of transparency prevent us from knowing how many such cases exist».
Lorenzo Morselli, assistente parlamentare
«Without the lobbyists we couldn’t even legislate. You are not slaves to those guys. You know they represent someone, they have particular interests, you know what they might try to do when they give you their arguments».
Tom Huddleston, Policy Analyst
« Lobby would not disappear if we became more democratic. But if I had more trust in the elected officials, then I don’t mind if the elected official gets opinions from different organizations».
For the article:
Europe’s lobbies: Brussels comes second to Washington
Illustration by Benjamin Heine
www.benjaminheine.blogspot.com