Back to Bilderberg

20 June 2011

This year's Bilderberg conference took place in St. Moritz, Switzerland, from 9-12 June. I'm not going to rehearse the usual conspiracy theories, but from a Brussels point of view it is worth noting that Herman van Rompuy was there, along with former Commissioners Peter Mandelson and Mario Monti, and the omnipotent and omnipresent Etienne Davignon, who was once a Commission vice-president, writes Stephen Gardner. Current commissioners Joaquín Almunia and Neelie Kroes also attended, just as they did in 2010. Kroes was at Bilderberg in 2009 as well. It is interesting to note that one of the topics for discussion was 'social networks: connectivity and security issues'. This will have been of particular interest to Kroes, in her role of Digital Agenda Commissioner. It would also have sparked the interest of Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, and Eric Schmidt and Reid Hoffman, respectively the executive chairmen of Google and LinkedIn. But any discussion that might have taken place between the CEOs and Kroes no doubt did not touch on her regulatory role. Meanwhile, Almunia was able to rub shoulders with the top executives from a number of major companies, including Airbus, Shell and Siemens. Unquestionably, Almunia's impartiality as competition commissioner was in no way dented by any discussions he may or may not have had with these industry luminaries. One CEO in attendance was Klaus Kleinfeld of Alcoa. In March, the Commission took the Italian government to the EU Court of Justice because it had not done enough to recover illegal state aid given to Alcoa. Alcoa is currently appealing the Commission's original decision to charge the Italians with reclaiming the aid. I'm sure that Almunia and Kleinfeld, should they have met at the conference – possibly in the company of Italian economy and finance minister Giulio Tremonti, who was also there – politely steered away from any discussion of this matter. What is it though with competition commissioners and Bilderberg? The current and previous two holders of that post – Almunia, Kroes and Monti – were all at St. Moritz. A version of this article appeared on EUObserver blogs.

 

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