Corporate Europe: How Big Business Sets Policies on Food, Climate and War

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Corporate Europe: How Big Business Sets Policies on Food, Climate and War

by David Cronin

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During the chaos of the eurozone crisis, few mainstream commentators have stopped to question the purpose of the European Union itself, and whose interests it serves. Corporate Europe goes beyond the divisions between nation-states, focusing instead on the division between the corporate elite and the peoples of Europe. 

David Cronin spent a year investigating the privileged access that big business enjoys in Brussels. In this book, he reveals how the EU's policies on health, climate change, armaments and food safety have been tailored to please an unaccountable elite. Making extensive use of previously unpublished documents, he explores how ideologically blinkered lobbyists have seized on the financial crisis of recent years to entrench the casino capitalism that caused the crisis in the first place.

What emerges is a powerful expose of how vested interests in the EU have manipulated opportunities to introduce ideologically-driven reforms.

Richard Allday welcomes David Cronin’s devastating critique of the corporate interests driving EU policy, including the new ultra-neoliberal TTIP proposals, in Corporate Europe

David Cronin, Corporate Europe: How big business sets policies on food, climate and war (Pluto 2013), xiii, 204pp.

With the European Commission and the US government pushing hard for the latest neoliberal trade treaty (the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – aka TTIP), activists need a readable, informative analysis of the forces driving this project. David Cronin has provided one.

An intriguing, information-packed, insightful and incisive critique of the coalition of corporations against the populations of the world, this book does what it says on the cover: it exposes ‘how big business sets policies on food, climate and war’. Any book that provides activists with a wealth of detailed facts and analysis is to be welcomed; and this book is crammed with them. When an author consciously avoids gobbledygook and jargon, it is clear s/he has written a book designed to be read by ordinary folk.

Partisan and polemical from the outset, he ensures that the reader is in no doubt s/he is reading a book on our side, against the rich and powerful. But this is no diatribe resting on unfounded claims or unattributed smears; with 776 references (for a mere 157 pages of text), Cronin allows no wriggle-room for any politician, lobbyist, bureaucrat or corporate spokesperson to claim they have been quoted out of context, or misrepresented - and as virtually every assertion redounds to their discredit, this will, hopefully, really piss them off.

Written in chapters dealing with specific industries, covering health, weapons manufacturers, finance, food and the tobacco industry, he details the crossovers, the links, and the undercover deals with precision and a devastating humour. So, in his introduction (p.9), he refers to CSR Europe (CSR standing for Corporate Social Responsibility): ‘an assortment of weapons (Dassault), car (Toyota, Volkswagen, Renault) and food (Unilever, Danone and Cargill) companies formed in 2010. Nobody should be deceived by CSR. It is not an effort by chief executives to get in touch with their inner tree-huggers.’ And he then goes on to blow apart the PR myth of ‘corporate social responsibility’ describing it as ‘an oxymoron’ and, ‘Worse …. a distraction from the need to confront the power of big business. Predictably, EU policymakers have allowed themselves to be distracted.’

Each chapter has a wealth of such darts, well aimed and sharp. So many that it becomes hard to choose one as more apt than another, so read for yourself and choose your favourite.

The strength (and the weakness) of this book is the painstaking detail with which the author unravels the close-woven mesh of deceit and dissimulation under which the Mandelsons, Blairs and Barrosos collaborate with the Monsantos, BAE Systems and other corporate slugs to drive home their agenda. Yet the central aim of the book is not to slag off the eminently-slaggable, it is to expose the very real consequences for ordinary people – the dispossessed of the world, north and south – if capital gains its prize.

And he is clear that the solution lies in our hands. In his final chapter, he punctures the myth of reform:

‘While I respect many campaigners who try to engage with the EU politely, I am convinced that the time for timid interaction is over. What we need is a mass movement that confronts power directly’ (p.151). He goes on (apropos climate change) to welcome the emerging mass movements: ‘Civil disobedience on an unprecedented scale might be the only way of preventing these corporations from frying our future.’

The only weakness of the book, if it can truly be described as a weakness, is precisely the painstaking detail. The preface of the book (pp. ix and x) is a wonderful two-page ‘short guide to the European Union’. Do not skip this. It is as good an analysis of the flaws of the EU as I have read anywhere, in a concise, precise and readable form. However, the final paragraph is misleading. He states that he aims to provide ‘a few snapshots’ to illustrate his central thesis.

A few snapshots! Ha! Do not be fooled, this is more akin to your in-laws’ “We took a few snaps of our holiday, would you like to see them?” and when you escape, hours later, you know more about Costa Malina than you ever thought possible; and about the salesman from Basildon who was in the same hotel, and his extended family, and the man who sells donkey rides on the beach, and the bloody donkeys? Enough!

This is not ‘a few snapshots’; it is page after page of a closely-researched demolition of corporate propaganda, so that no-one who reads it will be able to sustain any illusions in the supposedly impartial nature of the EU, major corporations, lobbyists or the politicians who court them and collaborate.

If it were not so well written, it could easily fall over into unreadability, which it never does. But it is not an easy read (at least not for a working lorry driver, who read it in fits and starts, as work and fifteen-hour days allowed). It is so densely-packed with closely-reasoned arguments, and the examples to back them up that it was a case of a few pages at a sitting, until I had finished a chapter; and then a few days to let it sink in before starting the next one.

But always, a compulsion to start the next one, because you realize from very early on, that every page of this book is arming you with facts indispensable for any activist who wants to carry the argument against TTIP, or international corporations, or the neoliberal agenda of austerity.

It is a Joe Calzaghe of a book, middleweight rather than heavyweight, but not an ounce of fat, unremitting and relentless, driving forward with a punch that leaves the opposition with nowhere to go but the canvas. I would recommend that any serious campaigner against TTIP (or austerity) read this book. You might end up a little punch drunk, but that will pass, and you will be far better trained for the next round. Thanks are owed to David Cronin.

http://www.counterfire.org/articles/book-reviews/17351-corporate-europe-how-big-business-sets-policies-on-food-climate-and-war

Pro-industry EU agenda rules in Brussels

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Wednesday, November 20, 2013

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By Ann Cahill
European Correspondent

THINK industry” is the predominant message in Brussels as every sector of EU legislation is being overhauled to eliminate any elements that could be seen as detrimental to commerce.

But many think the move is going too far with EU institutions and government captured by big business, targeting safeguards for workers and consumers and essentially undermining countries social systems.

A new book, Corporate Europe, by Irish journalist David Cronin, investigates the role of business in Brussels especially in the financial crisis, banking regulation, tobacco, food, energy, and climate change.

“Corporations have captured almost every aspect of the decision-making process — from the moment any legislation is mooted these guys have their fingerprints on the process,” according to Cronin.

The expert panels that are set up to advise on most policies by the European Commission are top-heavy with industry figures. For instance, research has one of the biggest budgets in the globe — more than €70bn over the next seven years. Many of those advising how the money should be allocated represent those who will be recipients, he points out.

Similarly the European Food Safety Authority, according to a study by Corporate Europe Observatory, found that even after a review to deal with conflicts of interests, 19 of the chairpersons on their 21 expert panels have ties with industry, while more than half the experts, on their own admittance, are linked to the industry.

This is in an agency that carries out no research itself but relies on the findings of the industry producing the goods; that does not pay its panel members; and that cannot publish much of the scientific evidence because it is considered a commercial secret by its owners, the industry.

It’s not difficult to understand why an almost exclusively pro-industry agenda rules in Brussels when you consider that there are 30,000 commission officials, and between 15,000 and 30,000 corporate lobbyists — and it could be higher, says Cronin.

“For every commission official there is at least one corporate lobbyist and they seriously outnumber the number of elected MEPs so there is a strong indicator of where power really lies.”

On a breakdown of lobbyists, 70% are from the corporate private sector, 20% are from non-profit which includes consumer, NGOs, and trade unions, while 10% represents local authorities and governments.

Those living in Brussels have become far too used to the lobbying model with many MEPs willing to defend putting forward amendments to legislation in their name that have been written by industry lobbyists, he says.

“A lot of people are surprised to learn just how malleable elected representatives are, that big business writes the laws in many cases is something that many of us have almost come to regard as normal — unacceptable, but normal. It happens everywhere of course including Ireland. It’s not confined to Brussels.”

But it is not just a few experts pushing their interests — this kind of thinking has now become endemic in Brussels, he believes. “Most important strategic thinking of where the EU is heading is being dictated by corporate lobby groups such as Europe Round Table of Industrialists and BusinessEurope,” he says.

They have privileged access to the most senior people in the EU institutions and, according to Cronin, have low-key meetings in private where they make the case for the reforms they want — which ultimately undermine the welfare state, pensions and labour protections.

One very powerful vested interest keeps cropping up in all kinds of fora — the tobacco industry, he has found. It funds Brussels-based thinktanks as well as employs people who have been on the inside of the EU system. One of the industry’s key objectives was for an impact assessment of the effects of new legislation on a narrow set of indicators affecting business. “This holds everything hostage to the demands of big business,” says Cronin.

It was involved in the TransAtlantic Trade Dialogue, run by a former British American Tobacco employee. This has now moved centre stage with the launch of the trade negotiations between the EU and the US with their demand for a special court where corporations could sue governments for decisions that deprive them of potential profits. The new EU-Canada agreement has such a mechanism, which Cronin says opens the way for companies selling genetically modified seed to proceed against the EU.

The EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership talks, which have just got under way and are not public, offers business another opportunity to suit its own agenda, he warns. The drive to ensure that standards are compatible on both sides of the Atlantic have the capacity to lower EU levels on food, chemicals, data protection and financial regulation.

Cronin believes people need to be clear and unite around a number of key demands to ensure they get a fair deal such as discouraging corporate tax avoidance, climate justice, arms industry. “We need a debate,” he says, adding that the media and journalists have been too willing to address issues with very strict limits that leave little room for the reality of most peoples lives.

“Economic matters are being confined to politicians and economists but these issues are way too important to leave to these so-called experts who are paid to represent a certain world view and essentially engage in a class war,” he says.

The emphasis on increasing profits for business by reducing all costs is having a big impact on ordinary citizens, with their rights being whittled away in the name of some kind of progress, he concludes.

ⓒ Irish Examiner Ltd. All rights reserved

http://www.irishexaminer.com/analysis/pro-industry-eu-agenda-rules-in-brussels-250079.html