International

Lobbying watchdogs Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) and Lobby Control today published a report which shows that many members of the second Barroso Commission, whose term expired last year, have accepted jobs which don’t stand up to scrutiny. ‘It’s hard to understand how a former European Commissioner such as Viviane Reding can claim with a straight face that her activities at the Bertelsmann Foundation are not aimed at influencing the European institutions,’ says SP Euro-MP Dennis de Jong. ‘To influence policy is precisely why this foundation was established. Yet she received permission to take this post from the current Commission under Jean-Claude Juncker. No wonder that people in Europe have no confidence in these EU institutions. The influence of the corporate lobby reaches to the very highest level.’

Europe has been frightened into wakefulness. Now that a huge influx of refugees is on its way to our part of the world, or already here, years of looking the other way, of denial, have given way to a panicked and manic urge to find solutions that are no solutions at all. So what should be done? The SP’s monthly magazine De Tribune sounded out people in The Hague and Damascus, in Berlin and Brussels and on Samos.