Once more, the power of money and its threat to democracy became the focus at Frontline, where the documentary The Brussels Business was shown on Friday evening and followed by a Q&A with directors Friedrich Moser and Mattieu Lietaert.

The Brussels Business analyzes the European Union’s growing lobby industry in Belgium’s capital, now the world’s second largest lobbying presence behind Washington, D.C.  The movie traces how corporations, rather than politicians, have ultimately pulled the strings in creating and directing the EU’s Monetary Union.  

Co-director Friedrich Moser told the audience:

"We were digging for what was actually the biggest lobby success of the European Union, and it’s the European Union itself."

Olivier Hoedeman, a corporate watchdog based in Brussels, argues in the film that:

"Twenty years of deregulation and liberalization […] a single market, a monetary union… [and downsizing] public services" were all part of a neoliberal agenda that business leaders used the EU to achieve."

In the mid-1990s, Hoedeman began working to expose corporate power in EU lobbying after noticing: 

"So many examples of new policies that were basically captured by industry, by industry lobbying."

During the Q&A, Moser and co-director Matthieu Lietaert emphasized two keys to a democratic EU that isn’t coopted by corporations:  transparency, and fair balance.  Lietaert noted:

"In Brussels, you have six-hundred lobby groups working for corporate interests. [But] you have less than twenty groups in the interest of society and NGOs." 

As Hoedeman asserts in the film:

"The question is: how many of the MEPs are defending the interests of the people, and how many are defending the interests of big business?"

The Brussels Business highlights the failure of European Commissioner Sim Kallas’ initiative to require lobbies to join a transparent register, and it recounts the near-passage of a 1998 law that severely weakened governments’ capacity to pass legislation that constrained corporations.  

The law was blocked only when its contents were leaked and made public, an NGO-fuelled firestorm of protest ensued before the vote, and France finally vetoed it.

The directors ended the evening by sharing their next project: an online game that lets users "play the lobbyist," thus engaging citizens with the weekly votes and debates in the European Parliament. Lietaert explained:

"You go online, and you start voting […]  Suddenly we tell Brussels, ‘hey, we’re watching you, and here is our voice.’  And then you can enter a dialogue […]  This is, for us, one of the big problems with democracy in Brussels […] there is no dialogue any more.  With the internet, we create that.  It would be 5, maybe ten minutes per week […] We are looking for funding for that."

A charming evening at the Frontline Club focused on a remarkably difficult theme: increasing disparities between rich and poor, powerful and powerless, and what they imply for our future.

Director of the think tank ResPublica, Philip Blond hosted the event, infusing it with humor as he led the panelists in a debate about the documentary Four Horsemen, which premiered in London at Frontline on 27 April. The documentary blames neoliberal and neoclassical economic theory for paving the way to an increasingly unjust, unstable, and unequal world.  Last night, the film’s director Ross Ashcroft elaborated its points with clarity and passion.

Daniel Ben-Ami journalist and author of Ferraries for All:  In Defense of Economic Progress, argued that the documentaries biggest mistake was to underestimate the role of the state in today’s crisis. Emeritus economics professor Victoria Chick, meanwhile, commented on the documentary’s suggestion that we return to the gold standard.  

"I sort of flinched," she said.  "Everything I’ve always known about the gold standard was so repressive, and it was a very deflationary regime.  [I] like the courageous quality of Minsky who said, ‘alright, I know banks are unstable, but they’re worth it, because they provide productive investment.’  Well that was when they did lend for productive investment.  And now they no longer do."

Giving voice to the sentiment of the evening, Mark Braund author of Four Horsemen:  The Survival Manual complained,

"We have democratic institutions which aren’t delivering democratic outcomes.  And that’s because I think too few people are interested enough to engage with what are quite complex ideas about how the ecomony works."

"X-box, cheap lager, and mass media" were Ashcroft‘s culprits for the public’s malaise in the face of a system that he believes is increasingly stacked against them.  

At several points, panelists emphasized that change would have to come "from the bottom up," but as one audience member regretted, what change "from the bottom up" really meant seemed hard to elucidate.

Amidst today’s troubling trends, Blond noted with optimism that ethics had returned to conversations about society and economics:

"This is an exciting time we’re in:  the left is arguing for ethics, when for many years ethics was akin to fascism and authoritarianism and being oppressive…  I think that’s genuinely a transformative, interesting moment."

Yet he ended the night on a sadder note, recalling a recent trip to his hometown of Liverpool:

"I was going around the northern neighborhoods, and people there haven’t worked since the first wave of globalization.  The deindustrialization there has essentially condemned three generations to endemic poverty.  What’s going to happen next is there’ll be a second wave, or a third wave, or a fourth wave, of automation, and that will take out middle class jobs.  And that’s already happening:  teaching, accounting, lawyers, etc….

Watch the full event here: