Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 5 February 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Context Phase

Photo of Joe HigginsJoe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

I was a member of the European Parliament for a while. Mr. Nava is correct that the Parliament and Council sign off on legislation.

It is true to say that the Commission is very influential in the production of legislation. In that regard, what type of influences lead Mr. Nava to make proposals? Mr. Nava will probably be aware of the Corporate Europe Observatory, which is a type of watchdog of the European Union institutions. It states that the European Commission operates an open door policy to lobbyists from the finance industry and that there are 1,700 finance industry lobbyists who spend €120 million per annum in lobbying the EU institutions. In contrast, civil society spends only a fraction of that amount. Was the decision to set only minimum standards in the pre-crisis period influenced by such lobbying by financial institutions?

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