Business Background
Neelie Kroes is Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda. She has attended eight Bilderberg conferences to date, every year since 2005.
She joined the EU Commission in 2004. According to the BBC: “At the time, the former Dutch transport minister was on the board of 12 companies, including Volvo and the French defence group Thales. She had also worked as a lobbyist for Lockheed-Martin.”
Her official EU Biographical Sketch gives a long list of her previous business interests – which includes being on the Supervisory Board of McDonald’s, the Advisory Board of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and the Supervisory Board of New Skies Satellites.
Open Governing
The keyword in the speeches and writings of Commissioner Kroes is “open” – whether it’s “open data”, “open science”, “open education” or an “open internet”. In June 2010 she said:
“I think that openness is a core European value, and one of our strengths, and I do see it as contributing to our ability to innovate.”She stresses both the economic and the social value of openness. She believes governments should be open with their data, and that an open government is one the people can trust. In a speech entitled ‘From Crisis of Trust to Open Governing’, delivered in March 2012, she says:
“Today’s economic crisis is a testing time for our democracies. Just look at the amount of protests in our streets across Europe. We need to bring back the trust in markets, in governments. Especially for young people who are massively left aside at the moment. One way to create trust is by increasing transparency in government. Citizens will be more confident if they can verify that the people they have elected inform them about what they do and how they do it.”A transparent government is a trusted government. And, as an EU Commissioner, Neelie Kroes can say with some pride:
“the EU is fully committed to open government and data”.In October 2012, Kroes explained how information can “empower citizens” and help people “hold their governments to account”. The more open the government, the more accountable it is. And the more accountable, the more trusted:
“We can change the relationship between governments and citizens. Putting public data online is a great example. It means more transparency in government.”This is her ideal: more openness, more data, more transparency, more accountability. An ideal which she sees alive and well in Europe – as she said in March of this year:
“Europe is a home of democracy, transparency and fundamental rights”.True Colours
European Commissioner Neelie Kroes has been to eight Bilderberg conferences, and hasn’t made a single public statement about these meetings. At the last gathering, in Chantilly, she spent three days – meeting in private – with two other European Commissioners (Joaquín Almunia and Karel de Gucht) along with the following elected public servants (showing their office at the time):
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Alison Redford (Canada: Premier of Alberta)
Jürgen Trittin (Germany: Parliamentary Leader, Alliance 90/The Greens)
Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría (Spain: Vice President and Minister for the Presidency)
Jutta Urpilainen (Finland: Minister of Finance
Christophe Béchu (France: Senator, and Chairman, General Council of Maine-et-Loire)
Nick Boles (Britain: Member of Parliament)
Kenneth Clarke (Britain: Member of Parliament, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of Justice)
Michael Noonan (Ireland: Minister for Finance)
Enrico Letta (Italy: Deputy Leader, Democratic Party)
Alexander Pechtold (Holland: Parliamentary Leader, Democrats ’66)
Mark Rutte (Holland: Prime Minister)
Jacek Rostowski (Poland: Minister of Finance)
Jorge Moreira da Silva (Portugal: First Vice-President, Partido Social Democrata)
Ali Babacan (Turkey: Deputy Prime Minister for Economic and Financial Affairs)
Mitchell Daniels, Jr. (US: Governor of Indiana)
John Kerry (US: Senator for Massachusetts)
The Press Office will be located in a larger Reception Zone, within the grounds of The Grove Hotel (near the hotel gates). It will provide journalists, photographers, bloggers and researchers with information on this year’s conference, and details about the delegates: including an ID service for delegate photographs.
Besides the Press Office, the Reception Zone will feature a place for speakers, lavatories, and a view of the hotel drive for photographers. Electricity will be available at the Press Office for recharging cameras and phones.
There will be liaison officers from the Hertfordshire Constabulary present in the Reception Zone for the duration of the conference.
The Bilderberg Welcoming Committee is a loose association of pro-transparency campaigners, journalists and organizations, who will be hosting the Press Office.
Press relations
This is the first officially sanctioned Press Office for the Bilderberg conference, and is a considerable step forward in the relations between the conference and the press.
The Bilderberg Group is famously shy of press attention. An article in the Daily Express, February 12, 1957 (a few years after the first official conference) shows how a veil of “secrecy and security” was drawn over the event:
But this attitude is finally changing, as the Chancellor George Osborne (Bilderberg attendee 2005-9, 2011) said, shortly after taking office: “We have already begun to implement the most radical transparency agenda the country has ever seen” (speech, June 8, 2010)
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