Corporate sponsoring of Green Week

Brussels, May 26, 2011 – The European Commission was sued today, accused of violating European transparency laws. Environmental law organisation ClientEarth, Friends of the Earth Europe (FoEE), FERN and Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) filed the lawsuit following the Commission’s refusal to provide access to information in decisions relating to the sustainability of Europe’s biofuels policy [1].

After the intense debate and media attention in the first weeks after the European Parliament's cash-for-amendments scandal broke, it has become very quiet in the last weeks. Discussions about transparency and ethics reforms in the wake of the scandal take place in secrecy in a working group of ten MEPs, led by Parliament President Buzek, in weekly meetings behind closed doors.

The Zero Emissions Platform (ZEP) – an EU-based fossil fuel industry group funded, in part, by the European tax payer – is in  Copenhagen to promote the role of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) in an agreement on climate change. This article looks at how ZEP has used public money to lobby for subsidies in the EU - and how it is pushing for support on an international scale.

Read the whole article here:

Burson-Marsteller is one of the world's most controversial 'public affairs' companies, with recent clients including Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, the Burmese dictatorship and the Saudi royal family. The company has also repeatedly run into criticism due to its record of establishing and running front groups on behalf of corporate clients. Van Hulten's future colleagues at Burson-Marsteller Brussels for instance masterminded the 'European Women for HPV Testing' coalition.

The new ALTER-EU report 'A captive Commission - the role of the financial industry in shaping EU regulation' can be found at: http://www.alter-eu.org/en/system/files/publications/CaptiveCommission.pdf Brussels, November 5, 2009 - The vast majority of financial ‘experts’ advising the European Commission represent the banks and investors responsible for the global economic crisis, according to a new report published today by the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER EU) [1].