José Manuel Durao Barroso at Goldman Sachs. The news came Friday he was for ten years, from 2004 to 2014, President of the European Commission, will join the London office of the investment bank – as President “non-executive” and adviser – to the help limit the negative effects of “Brexit”. End of a career that is not surprising when you know the man, but none the less shocking, GS is one of the most involved banks in the subprime crisis which led to the crisis fiscal 2007, and in the Greek crisis, have helped hide the extent of its deficit before speculating in 2009-2010 against the Greek debt which she obviously knew the unsustainability … This is the worst time, a symbol disastrous for the Union and a boon for europhobes, a Commission president is supposed to embody, well beyond its mandate, European values that are precisely not those of unbridled finance embodied Goldman Sachs: all former Presidents of Commission, which enjoy a comfortable pension supposed to protect them from temptation, have, so far, managed to avoid such a mix of genres.
militant Atlanticist
But morals and beliefs have never stifled the former chairman of Maoist students (MRPP) suddenly passed to the right (PSD) to 24 years before starting a meteoric political career which led him to various ministerial posts and the head of Portugal in 2002, barely 46 years old. It was in June 2004 that is powered in Brussels with his friend Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister at the time that blew its name to partners having vetoed supported mezzo voce, by country ‘Eastern Europe, the candidacy of Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt supported by Berlin and Paris: while Liberal, he was too federalist for London and especially he had opposed the Iraq war. This was not the case Barroso Atlanticist activist, he organized the famous “Azores summit” of 2003, with the United States, Spain and Great Britain, in which the war on Iraq was declared. Worse, he then played a murky role in the transfer of prisoners to Guantanamo, leaving the CIA planes borrow airports and Portuguese airspace. He never regretted his unwavering support for George W. Bush.
Barroso does not forget its debts and pay Blair in return, particularly in opposing any regulation of the financial system to greater happiness the City. It also shows during the French referendum campaign in defense through the first draft of the Bolkestein directive liberalizing the service, which fueled the campaign of opposition to the European Constitution, a text of which the British did not want . Yet as the financial crisis ravaged the world and that Europe is pitching dangerously, it is re-appointed in June 2009 by all Heads of State and Government, Spain and Portugal, led to time by socialists, by supporting the “Iberian solidarity”. Worse, the European Parliament, which could oppose this agreement, will support a large majority (including socialists, except, in particular, the French delegation), and that, despite a campaign led by Daniel Cohn Bendit, Co-Chair of the green group, and … Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the liberal group.
Mistakes in the crisis
During his reign as long as that of Jacques Delors, the Commission has been reduced to the level of mere secretariat of the European Council of heads of state and government, Barroso assuming to be “at the service of the States” and not of the general European interest supposed to transcend national interests. This refusal to play to the Commission the role that is his largely European mistakes in managing the eurozone crisis. Only good thing about this second term, Barroso is more control, but again because the United vaccinated by the financial crisis, want more control markets. On the merits, in reality, it does not change: still Atlanticist and free trade, it was he who personally convinced the States to engage in the negotiation of TTIP or TAFTA, the free trade agreement with the United States, a project increasingly challenged and that feeds the continental Euroscepticism.
This is a man who has seriously weakened the European Community and its institutions that are recycled into a of the most controversial investment banks of its time. Certainly, other community leaders went through Goldman Sachs, including Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, but that was before holding European functions. The end of course splashes across the EU, the European Council of Heads of State and Government in the first place, but also the European Parliament. All those who fought that sadly can not see that they were right. But the damage is done: now, how not suspect the Presidents of Commission and commissioners to spare this or interests to ensure a financially comfortable future? At the Commission and Member States to rapidly adopt rules to prohibit such a mix of genres. In fact, if Barroso address a gigantic arm of honor to Europeans through the service of Goldman Sachs money is the moral one and the future of the Union last concern, it did not violate any rule. And therein lies the problem.
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