Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-05-08-Speech-4-172"
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"en.20080508.21.4-172"2
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"Madam President, lobbyists love Brussels. They arrive in the European institutions and they perceive at once that the system was designed by and for people like them.
They can get legislation through here that would never pass through a popularly elected legislature. I am thinking of bills such as the ban on higher-dose vitamin and mineral supplements that was the subject of intense opposition in all the Member States but that was pushed through here by a few large pharmaceutical corporations in backroom deals.
So much, I think, is well known outside this Chamber. What is perhaps less widely appreciated is the extent to which these lobbying organisations, as my colleague Mr Heaton-Harris has just said, are themselves creatures of the European Union, wholly dependent on the Commission for their funding.
And so, when the European Commission goes through the motions of consulting civil society, what it actually means is that it is consulting the European Union of Journalists, the European Women’s Lobby, the European Trades Unions Congress and a bunch of other organisations that depend on the European taxpayer for every euro of their income.
I am bound to ask whether there is anybody out there in the nation states who genuinely supports this project without, on some level, being paid to. The way of testing whether I am right about that is to put your Lisbon Treaty to the people in a referendum."@en1
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