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Article: The Brussels lobbyist and the struggle for ear-time.(commentary on the Maastricht treaty on the European Union)(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- August 15, 1998
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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A LONE paragraph of 68 words in all, appended as a protocol to the Maastricht treaty on European Union at its signing in 1992, may well represent the high point of the lobbyist's art as practised in Brussels this half-century. It qualifies an article in an earlier EU treaty, the Treaty of Rome, which stipulated equal pay for men and women. Following a judgment of the European Court of Justice, this article might also have obliged pension funds to equalise the pension payments they had made to men and women since 1957, when the Treaty of Rome was signed. By one calculation, the protocol added to the Maastricht treaty was worth $1 billion to $2 billion a word in savings to ...