European Transparency: Myth or Reality?

With the Lisbon Treaty, Europe's latest "reform treaty", under ratification process in the member States, the Bloated Plutocrat and the Bleeding Heart are at odds over transparency in Europe's institutions, the Commission's efforts to regulate "lobbying", and the uncommonality of common sense.

Ireland likely to vote NO on Treaty of Lisbon:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2007-12/13/content_6319098.htm

Commission Under Pressure to Curtail Lobbying Influence:
http://www.corporateeurope.org/barroso.html

BP:"Is irony dead in Europe as a whole, or simply among the unwashed loony left? Do the "50 civil society groups" touting the restrictions on democracy advocated in their missive not see that should the economic interests of Europe be barred from the exercise of democratic speech with its minimally accountable bureaucrats, clouded in the mists of arcane bureaucracy and often acting solely in the national interests of the member states, so too may a case be made that their own brand of naïve drivel ought be suppressed? Are they further blind to the fact that whither the interests of Europe's economic institutions and industries, so too the interests of those whose employment, livelihood, and extensive tax-funded entitlements are dependent on them? Pish! A plague upon the unwashed whiners!"

BH:"Would that there were 10 civil society groups, let alone 50, on the American side of the Atlantic willing and able to mount such a necessary and well-reasoned argument for curbing the influence of the corporate lobbyists that have so polluted the waters of democratic government. Nevertheless, even this effort falls short of the necessary reforms to reestablish the preeminence of the people in politics. Demands for transparency, regulation and oversight of the hoards of lobbyists, lawyers, PR operatives, and "communicators" fall far short of the need to eliminate their influence altogether. Indeed, without more radical efforts to bar corporate special interests and their operatives entirely from exerting influence on legislators, regulators, and executives, this plea may be seen as nothing more than a job substitution programme, in which the self-same operatives will become modern day Mandarins of a registration and oversight regime for special interest groups damned with its own increasingly opaque transparency as working groups are established, committees formed, and “watchdog bodies” entrenched. No more! Let these corporate assassins of our public good be rounded up and ejected from the arena of government!"

Commission Green Paper on the European Transparency Initiative:
http://ec.europa.eu/commission_barroso/kallas/doc/com2006_0194_4_en.pdf

And the inevitable catfight:
"Commission defiant over lobbying transparency criticism"
http://www.euractiv.com/en/pa/commission-defiant-lobbying-transparency-criticism/article-170299