When is an invitation not an invitation?
Friday, March 21, 2008 If you invite yourself to a meeting the purpose of which is to discuss how to reduce smoking, and your raison d'etre (don't be frightened, it's a French phrase) is to oppose the purpose of the meeting, then being told to go away is not exactly surprising. He [Simon Clark] fails to say whose meeting it was - perhaps because this would undermine his role as "victim".
The same comment, now written by someone called "Simon" (good name!), also appears on The Free Society blog. To clear up any misunderstanding I have replied - on both blogs - as follows:
The meeting was organised by the European Commission's Health & Consumer Protection Directorate-General. Officially it was called a "consultation meeting with EU experts, civil society and social partners on an impact assessment on smoke-free environments". Informally, it was described as a "stakeholder consultation on Commission's smoke-free initiative".
Forest was not originally invited, but that doesn't mean to say we shouldn't have been there. (I don't know about you, but I would have thought that the consumer is a fairly obvious stakeholder in such a discussion.)
When we queried why we had not been invited (bearing in mind that, last year, we contributed to the EU Green Paper consultation on the subject), we received, from the Health & Consumer Protection DG, the following email: "Please accept my apologies for this oversight. You will find enclosed the background document and the agenda of the meeting. Could you kindly confirm who will represent Forest at the meeting?"
I think that's an invitation. Don't you?
As it happens, the facilitator made a similar claim during the meeting when she turned to me and said (in a rather accusing tone), "You invited yourself to this meeting." There were a number of thoughts racing through my head at the time so I let it pass, but the more I think about it the more annoyed I am because it was clearly designed to undermine my position at the table.
The full story is that I initially asked if I could attend a different meeting, but after a flurry of emails it was suggested to me (by the Health & Consumer Protection DG itself) that a more appropriate meeting for Forest to attend would be one involving "civil society and social groups".
If people still want to say I invited myself, so be it. Personally, I don't see a problem. If Forest was to sit around waiting for "invitations" to do this or that our voice would rarely if ever be heard. In short, we wouldn't be doing our job. Is that what people want? (I think we know the answer.)
More to the point, how come four major pharmaceutical companies were allowed to attend a meeting for "civil society and social groups" while Forest - representing the consumer - was asked to leave? Questions must be asked and, believe me, we won't let it rest.
BTW, I was delighted to receive, late last night, the following cheery message from a friendly MEP.
"Well done Simon! You couldn't make it up, could you? There is an emerging theme here. The EU hates dissent, and simply cannot tolerate it. Lisbon Treaty, climate change, smoking. Either you're on message, or you're a non-person."
Now there's a man who knows what he's talking about!
Reader Comments (5)
Simon - your experience of this EU consultation exercise raises fundamental questions about the democratic credentials of this institution. People across the EU membership states feel totally excluded from the Brussel's beaurocracy - it is seen as a monolithic, gravy train. I, for one, would be more than prepared to withdraw from this club.
Bill.
I agree with Bill.
I along, with many others am angry, they do not want to give us a voice. Never have so few - Spoken for so many!
We should have a referendum. We need to be able to vote out those who do not speak for us, the people who elected them, to do so.
If dissent will not by tolerated by EU we will all be brain dead drones.
Simon - there seems to be an error on the front page. The second item of 'new news' scrolling up is dated September 2005 and ends with a call for a ban in enclosed spaces 'including pubs'.
EU membership is not the issue. This occurs with HMG. They have 'stake holders' which exclude the people actually affected.
Where now? How is the opaque transparency exposed. That is the issue.
If a meeting is part of a ('transparent') democratic process, is about stake holders and not representative of all stake holders then you have a duty to invite yourself, or in other ways get invited, to the meeting.
In anycase it seems you were invited anyways.
west
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I think West makes a critical point, Simon.
You're the only representative we have that has access to the political field and the media, so yes. If you're not invited, then we have no voice anywhere. Surely you have every right to insist yourself upon these meetings, since we have every right to have our voices heard (no matter how much they try to pretend we don't exist).
I can only guess that they view smokers as being in some sort of half-life - not really fully existing until we become converted from Big-Tobacco- supplied 'nicotine addicts' (bad) to Big-Pharma-supplied 'nicotine addicts' (good).
I'm never gonna convert, so unless you get my voice heard, I'll undoubtedly be in this 'half-life', invisible to all in power, for the rest of my days.
I hope you'll keep going on this path, Simon, and that you'll step up the pace and the pressure to insist us into their thought processes.