Networks of Power: "Les Personnalités" of Big Business and the EU

While in many ways, the European Union has been Europe’s most progressive and cosmopolitan achievement, characterized overall by robust economic growth, the recent decade of crises have revealed deep structural flaws within the Union, many of which began as birth defects related to the fundamental lack of corporate regulation. This paper, part of a larger dissertation project on the role of multinational firms in European integration, conducts a historical analysis of two inherent flaws in the relationship between big business and the European Union, flaws which now threaten the integrity — perhaps even the existence — of the Union. First, this paper analyzes the ways in which corporations, in the absence of a founding supranational European policy-making body, were called on to serve as regulatory policy advisors and authors at both at the national and at the EU levels from the 1970s to the present day, resulting in ineffective and corrupt self-‘regulation.’ Second, drawing from the recent seminal work of Gabriel Zucman and building on the lack of objective oversight, this paper evaluates the extent to which corporate tax evasion jeopardizes European solvency on a scale comparable to the debt crisis. In both cases, big business has proven to be no match for the institutions and enforcement mechanisms of the EU, despite the fact that the EU's institutions exist for such a purpose. This historical analysis of the deep-rooted structural problems in the relationship between corporations and the European Union aims to draw attention to the need for transformation if the Union is to survive.