Thanks chiefly to the efforts of the Irish MEP Patricia McKenna, we now know quite a lot about the relationship between the European Union and members of various elite management groups, notably the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group.
Romano Prodi, now President of the European Commission, was a Steering Committee Member of the Bilderberg Group in the 80s – he is in their booklet in 1982.(1) Prodi has limited the declarations of interests required of his Commissioners to the last 10 years, something not done in the previous Commission, and so has avoided declaring his Bilderberg role.(2)
Prodi’s 20 Commissioners include 7 other identified members of the elite management groups. They are:
Mario Monti has now formally declared that he was a former Steering Committee member of Bilderberg (’83-’93), and stated in an European Parliament answer that he was a member of the Executive committee of the Trilateral Commission Europe, from 1988 to 1997. He apparently confirmed his resignation from the Trilateral Commission in the hearing about his nomination.(3)
Pedro Solbes Mira declares his membership of the Trilateral Commission since 1996, but fails to mention his participation in Bilderberg this year.(4)
Chris Patten does not list his current membership of the Trilateral Commission.
Gunther Verheugen does not mention his participation in Bilderberg in 1995 in Bürgenstock, Switzerland.(5)
Antonio Vitorino does not declare that he attended Bilderberg in 1996.(6)
Erikki Liikanen attended Bilderberg this year in June in Sintra, Portugal, according to the official press list circulated, and reported in the Portuguese newspaper, The News Weekly.(7) But Liikanen does not mention this in his declaration.(8)
Frits Bolkestein: According to his declaration of interests, Bolkestein is to remain a Member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs – Chatham House in London. He does not mention his participation in the Bilderberg Group in Toronto in 1996.(9)
President of the new European Union Commission, Romano Prodi, was the subject of a long piece in the anti-EU Daily Telegraph of the 12 June this year which tells us a great deal about the way the EU-multinational business relationship works. The Telegraph was given Prodi’s financial records. They showed that Prodi had a company, ASE. It had no employees and no premises – it was simply a vehicle to receive payments (and avoid tax). In the early 1990s the company was paid £1.4 million in ‘consulting fees’, chiefly by Goldman Sachs, General Electric, and Unilever. During this period Prodi became head of the Italian state holding company IRI, where his role was to privatise state assets. His ‘consulting’ fees reached £455,000 in 1993 – the year, according to the Telegraph, he oversaw privatisation of the:
‘….Italian food conglomerate Cirio-Bertolli-DeRica, in which Mr Prodi’s former paymasters at Goldman Sachs played an advisory role for the buyers. The Cirio group was sold for half of its real value to a front company ……then immediately resold in part to another of Mr Prodi’s former paymasters….Unilever.’
One of those ‘no weatherman required’ situations…..
Bigger Issues
The minutes of the 1999 Bilderberg meeting have been leaked – the first time there has been such a leak. The Big Issue of November 15 carried extracts from the minutes and they are on the Web in full at http://www.schnews.org.uk/bilderberg/index.html
Among the comments from the meeting quoted in The Big Issue was the following from Peter Mandelson:
‘…two roads stretch in front of Nato. One leads to a new division of Europe, where the continent returns to its ethnocentric ways….. The second road is a little closer to the nineteenth century Europe, with all the great powers not just America and the EU, but Russia, China and Japan co-operating.’
Closer to which aspect of 19th century Europe, oh wise one? War? Nationalism? Imperialism? Industrialisation?
Notes
- This also shows that Wim Duisenberg was the then Treasurer.
- The declaration of interests of these Commissioners is at http://europa.eu.int/comm/newcomm/commissioners/interests/index_en.htm
- For Monti see: http://europa.eu.int/comm/newcomm/commissioners/ interests/monti_en.pdf where he lists his former memberships of the committees of Trilateral and Bilderberg, but does not list these as current, suggesting that he has now also resigned from the Executive Committee of Trilateral.
- See http://www.the-news.net/archives/bilburglist05-6.htm
- See http://www.tlio.demon.co.uk/bilder.htm
- See again http://www.tlio.demon.co.uk/bilder.htm
- http://www.the-news.net/archives/bilburglist05-6.htm
- http://europa.eu.int/comm/newcomm/commissioners/interests/liikanen_fr.pdf
- See http://www.tlio.demon.co.uk/bilder.htm.