European Round Table

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Logo of the European Round Table

The European Round Table of Industrialists ( European Round Table Industrial ) is a lobbying organization of some 50 business leaders of major European multinationals based in Brussels. The aim of the forum is to develop long-term business-friendly strategies and to organize meetings with members of the European Commission , individual Commissioners or the Commission President in order to shape the direction of the integration process within the EU .

history

In 1983, 17 business leaders and two members of the European Commission founded the European Round Table of Industrialists at the instigation of Pehr Gyllenhammar ( Volvo ) and Etienne Davignon ( Commissioner for Enterprise and Industry ) with the aim of promoting European integration . The plan was to shape Europe in the interests of the big companies and to strengthen the EC. National vetoes of the member states which could delay or hinder an EC decision should be abolished. The ERT should not concern itself with the details, but should help determine the central direction of Europe and thereby be in close contact with the European Commission and the European Parliament . Other founding members were Umberto Agnelli ( Fiat ), Helmut Maucher ( Nestlé ), Olivier Lecerf ( Lafarge Coppée ) and Wolfgang Seelig ( Siemens ). "The ERT is" a combination of a club and a publicly effective think tank ". Members are not companies, but currently (2016) 50 CEOs of large European corporations who have been invited (co-opted).

The Frenchman Benoît Potier (CEO of Air Liquide ) has been the chairman since 2014 .

Projects

European major construction projects in road and rail transport such as u. a. the Eurotunnel , the fixed Fehmarnbelt link , the expansion of the European high-speed network between London, Paris, Hamburg, Munich and Rome, the further development of high-speed trains such as the magnetic levitation train , all go back to initiatives of the European Round Table.

The Lisbon strategy was also launched.

Since its inception, the ERT has called for increased competitiveness in order to create jobs and economic growth. As early as 1983, the ERT proposed the introduction of the European internal market in the paper “Foundations for the Future of European Industry” in order to reduce the costs of cross-border traffic within the EU and to break down barriers to job and goods mobility. In addition to the original central fields of activity of employment and competition policy, the digital economy, energy and climate change, training, corporate finance and taxation, trade and investment were added. In 2014 the ERT outlined its current goals with “ERT's Vision for Competitive Europe in 2025” and “EU Industrial Renaissance, ERT Agenda for Action 2014-2019” to overcome the current severe economic crisis: free markets, competition and deregulation in the context of transatlantic trade - and investment partnership ( TTIP ), as well as reform of the welfare state and completion of the EU internal market.

In influencing EU politics, the ERT was more successful as a representative of the interests of large-scale industry than the umbrella organization of the business associations Businesseurope . It is represented by several members in the Competitiveness Advisory Group ( CAG ) and its biannual meetings take place a few days before the EU summit. With its writings "Changing Scales" (1985) and "Education and European Competence" (1989) the ERT complained about the lack of competitiveness of European research in the fields of computer science and biotechnology and called for tertiary education to be reconstructed according to the requirements of industry. With “Educations for Europeans. Towards a Learning Society ”, which the ERT sent to over 30,000 people in the education sector in 1995, criticized a standardization of the education system.

Since 1983, the ERT has been striving to harmonize old-age provision in the EU with little success. He was also unable to simplify corporate taxation and VAT across the EU so that companies operating in several EU countries only had to file one tax return. The social dialogue with trade unions for pan-European wage negotiations failed due to the resistance of UNICE .

literature

  • Otto Holman ; Kees Van Der Pijl : 'The Capitalist Class in the European Union' , in: George A. Kourvetaris ; Andreas Moschonas ( ed .): The Impact of European Integration , Westport 1996, pp. 55-74.
  • Otto Holman : Transnational Economy and European Integration: The Role of the European Roundtable of Industrialists , in: Christoph Dörrenbächer ; Dieter Plehwe (ed.): Limitless control? Organizational change and political power multinational company , Berlin 2000, pp. 245–268.
  • Michael Nollert: High-level lobbying and agenda setting: The European Roundtable of Industrialists , in: Björn Wendt; Marcus B. Klöckner; Sascha Pommrenke; Michael Walter (Ed.): How elites organize power. Bilderberg & Co .: lobbying, think tanks and media networks, Hamburg 2016, pp. 144–156.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ About ERT. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on April 15, 2015 ; accessed on April 11, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ert.eu
  2. ^ Corporate Europe Observatory: Europe Inc. Writing the Script: The European Round Table of Industrialists. Pluto Press, 2003, accessed March 9, 2013 .
  3. ↑ Michael Nollert: High-level lobbying and agenda setting: The European Roundtable of Industrialists , in: Björn Wendt; Marcus B. Klöckner; Sascha Pommrenke; Michael Walter (Ed.): How elites organize power. Bilderberg & Co .: lobbying, think tanks and media networks , Hamburg 2016, p. 144 f.
  4. ↑ ERT: Missing Links (PDF; 7.8 MB), published December 1984
  5. ↑ Blue and Green communication / Visualantics / ZDF / RTBF / CBA: THE BRUSSELS BUSINESS ( Memento from April 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), by Friedrich Moser & Matthieu Lietaert, published in 2012
  6. ↑ Sven Röben: The mother of all lobbies , in: cafebabel.com, February 23, 2004. (Archive version here) ( Memento from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on February 13, 2013
  7. ↑ ERT: Reshaping Europe (PDF; 12.4 MB), published December 1991
  8. ↑ Davide Bradanini: The Rise of the Competitiveness Discourse - A Neo-Gramscian Analysis. in: Bruges Political Research Papers no 10 , Dec. 2009
  9. ↑ Michael Nollert: High-level lobbying and agenda setting: The European Roundtable of Industrialists , in: Björn Wendt; Marcus B. Klöckner; Sascha Pommrenke; Michael Walter (Ed.): How elites organize power. Bilderberg & Co .: lobbying, think tanks and media networks , Hamburg 2016, p. 146 f.
  10. ↑ Michael Nollert: High-level lobbying and agenda setting: The European Roundtable of Industrialists , in: Björn Wendt; Marcus B. Klöckner; Sascha Pommrenke; Michael Walter (Ed.): How elites organize power. Bilderberg & Co .: lobbying, think tanks and media networks , Hamburg 2016, pp. 147–150 f.
  11. ↑ Michael Nollert: High-level lobbying and agenda setting: The European Roundtable of Industrialists , in: Björn Wendt; Marcus B. Klöckner; Sascha Pommrenke; Michael Walter (Ed.): How elites organize power. Bilderberg & Co .: lobbying, think tanks and media networks , Hamburg 2016, p. 150.