The following is my personal opinion:
‘Red tape’ means ‘excessive bureaucracy or adherence to official rules and formalities’.
Romano Prodi (European Commission president from 1999 to 2004) woke up the Red Tape monster; the European Commission began taking their own legislative initiatives. Those initiatives were considered as clumsy, but should in fact be seen under the spectrum of corruption.
Another remarkable point is that under Romano Prodi’s presidency, the Italians raised to power. Prodi did what no EU president should do: push his national (Italian) citizen to top and key positions within the EU institutions. Many rumours were circulating that Prodi was very close to the Russians (Cold War context). Remember, Romano had been tipped off (by Moscow???) regarding the whereabouts of Aldo Moro (ex Italian Prime Minister who had been kidnapped by the red brigades). Read: The Anti Oxo History (FREE)
Let us remember that Romano’s brother, Vittorio, was the guy who came up with a single piece of legislation to serve national commercial interests. It was the first time that a piece of legislation had been made to serve the commercial interests of one particular company, in this case the SUP Directive and the Italian oil company ‘ENI’ who used to be called ‘AGIP’ and used to be known as the oil company owned by the Italian crime syndicat.
Let me re-phrase this: under the ‘Prodi’ rule, the European Commission was under heavy influence of Moscow, ENI and the Italian crime syndicat …. who infiltrated the EU institutions.
Barroso (2004 – 2014) was the pawn of the EU Council. Although this may seem as an insult, we understand that Barroso was probably the greatest EU Commission President ever.
Barroso understood it perfectly: under his presidency, the European Commission shouldn’t take its own initiatives. Barroso understood that the European Commission was made up of people who lacked practical experience and who had very little clue on how the private market really worked.
Barroso hid behind the EU Council to avoid clumsy or corrupt pieces of legislations. In other words, EU Members States were running the show and the European Commission played the domestic servant … as it should be.
Ladies and Gentlemen … let us sit down for a minute and recognise the wisdom of Barroso.
So Barroso was a clean incorruptible politician? I didn’t say that. He was less corrupt than Prodi or Von der Leyen…. but he wasn’t mother Theresa. I mean, he went to work for Goldman Sachs after his Commission tenure and he became the subject of an ethics inquiry. Guys, we’re dealing with politicians: You can’t be an honest guy and reach the highest levels of politics. The political chess board is a nasty piece of bullshit.
Jean-Claude Juncker (2014 – 2019) got the vibes of Barroso and decided to stop all legislative initiatives from the European Commission …. he wanted less but better regulation. He understood that the European Commission was run by people with dogmatic ideas who had no idea what they were talking about.
Ladies and Gentlemen … let us sit down for a minute and recognise the wisdom of Juncker. Was he incorruptible? Definitely not.
And now Ladies and Gentleman, the ‘pièce de résistance‘, … Ursula von der Leyen … the woman who sold her soul to the devil. Ursula turned the stream around and decided to regulate everything that moves. I mean look at her legislative legacy …. a bloody farce
- Green Deal
- Clean Industrial Deal
- Greenwashing directive
- Competitiveness Compass
- Mass balance
- Net Zero bullshit
- so many more
And the Pfizer gate …. where she ordered billions of covid vaccins to the Pfizer CEO through a personal Whatsapp message that vanished suddenly. Long live democratic transparency.
In her Whatsapp correspondence with Pfizer CEO, he replied that he would give her a nice gift for her birthday. Eventually, she received jewels and diamonds worth over €10 millions.
There’s more …. When she started her tenure, she took her official apartments in the official European Commission building (the Berlaymont building) …. listen to that … so that she could have meetings with lobbyists in her official flat upstairs without the presence of EU Commission officials …. so she could accept cash and valuable gifts … store them inside her flat and take them with her when she leaves the building outside office hours.
Ursula should be called Alibaba ….
And that’s the way the cookie crumbles at the European Commission.