Brighton, 07/11/2000 (Agence Europe) - The Sussex European Institute has just published "Big Business and the European Agenda", a study in which Keith Richardson, who was from 1988 to 1998 Secretary General of the European Table of Industrialists (ERT), described the role exercised by this influential organisation. It was created in 1983 to "react to Eurosclerosis" and provide input from enterprises towards the political debate" by a group of industrialists lead by the businessman from a country that at the time was not a member of the European Community, Pehr Gyllenhammar, from Volvo. The intention was partly, notes Keith Richardson, to "the question repeated asked" by two commissioners, Etienne Davignon and Francois-Xavier Ortoli: "who do we talk to when we want to talk to European industry?". As for Helen Wallace, co-Director of the Institute of the University of Sussex, she notes: "like it or dislike it, big business is one of the main factor driving the modern world (…) The ERT was a significant force in the development of the EU during the 1990s, and we are very pleased to be able to publish a paper which gives a rare "view from the inside" without hiding some of the more controversial aspects of its work".
Keith Richardson recalls the relaunch of ERT in 1998 (with the nomination at its head of Wisse Dekker, from Philips) and the intensive work on Europe's internal market", leading to the theme of monetary union and the publication in 1991 of the "mega-report" by the ERT Reshaping Europe. This report was accompanied by "enthusiastic comments" from Jacques Delors and the main actor, Jerome Monnod, President of Lyonnaise des Eaux (presently special advisor to President Chirac: Ed.), having become the third President of the European table of Industrialists. The start of the Presidency was marked by a return of generalised pessimism over the European building process, to which the ERT had tried to react by publishing two reports entitles Rebuilding Confidence and Beating the Crisis, and by working in close cooperation with the European Commission. The ideas of the ERT "were evident in the Delors White paper on Competitiveness, Growth and Employment, and also in the parallel Action Plan issued by the Essen European Council in 1994 formally endorsed the ERT proposal for a high level Competitiveness Advisory Group, writes Keith Richardson, who then recalls, "spurred by conversations with Chancellor Kohl and the new European Commission President Jacques Santer, the ERT decided to participate in the debate on "modernising the EU's decision-making procedures". "The industrialists met one government leader after another to urge the need for practical improvements to an inadequate institutional system", notes Keith Richardson, while underlining that the pressure in this direction was maintained under the Presidency of the fourth ERT President, Helmut Maucher, from Nestle, to reach the introduction by the ERT of the notion of benchmarking in the European debate. The pressure by the ERT "may have helped to ensure that the jobs summit of 1997 adopted a benchmarking approach", felt Keith Richardson - who does not hide certain weak points of the ERT work, and the criticisms of those who reproach the European Round Table of having too much influence…
(SEI Working Paper N°35: "Big Business and the European Agenda", by Keith Richardson. GBP 6. Information: Glynis Flood, Sussex European Institute. Tel: 44/0 123 877297, Fax: 44/0 1273 678 571, E-mail: g.b.flood@sussex.ac.uk).