Barroso broke his promise and lobbied Brussels on the behalf of Goldman Sachs

Durão Barroso, against a promise he made when taking office in Goldman Sachs shortly after no longer heading the European Commission, lobbied for the investment bank to a European commissioner, the commissioner for Growth and Employment, Jyri Katainen, confirmed.

“Indeed, I met with Mr Barroso from Goldman Sachs in the Silken Berlaymont Hotel in Brussels on 25 October 2017”, the commissioner wrote in a letter disclosed this Tuesday, as an answer to a question from the non-proft organization Corporate Europe Observatory, which pays special attention to monitoring of the lobby.

According to Katainen, quoted on the European website EU Observer, the meeting was only between the commissioner and the former EC president and current Goldman Sachs chairman, and the subject was “commerce and defense“.

In 2016, a little over one year since leaving the EC presidency, Durão Barroso began working with the North-American investment bank Goldman Sachs. The Ad-Hoc Ethics Committee, created to analyse the case, concluded there were no violations of the European Union ethics. Nonetheless, the committee pointed out that Durão Barroso did not make the wisest decision “as it was expected of someone who occupied such a high office”.

The Committee also registered Barroso’s promise “to not lobby” on the behalf of Goldman Sachs, in a letter sent to the committee. In another letter, Barroso also promised to Jean Claude Juncker, his successor, that he wouldn’t: “I have not been engaged to lobby on behalf of Goldman Sachs and I do not intend to do so”.

Katainen states there are no documents regarding what was discussed in the meeting because he did not take notes, which he normally doesn’t do. The only information about that meeting was written on the commissioner’s schedule, without referring the name of Durão Barroso: it only stated that Katainen met with Goldman Sachs Group.