Flagship reports

From hospitals to care homes, the evidence is mounting that outsourcing and private provision of healthcare has significantly degraded EU member states’ capacity to deal effectively with COVID-19. The EU must reject the private sector lobbyists now whispering in its ear, and put public provision at the centre of its strategy.

Amidst growing concerns that the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) undermines urgent climate action, its corporate profiteers are spewing propaganda. Cut through the rhetoric with our myth-busting guide to the ECT.

Our new report exposes the intense and concerted lobbying campaign by the gas industry to secure political, financial and regulatory support for its new climate ‘solution’: hydrogen from gas. While the EU claims the hydrogen economy will be ‘green’, industry has ensured that for the next few crucial decades it will be powered by polluting fossil fuels.

The EU’s current model of agriculture directs billions in EU taxpayers’ money to fuel climate change, destroy biodiversity, and even undermine farmers’ livelihoods. While the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is approaching a key vote, freedom of information requests show that farmers and agribusiness lobby group Copa-Cogeca, along with pesticides and food industry giants, are doing their best to stop the CAP reform from aligning with the new Farm to Fork strategy of the Green Deal.

Germany will shortly take over the EU Council Presidency at a critical time. A new report looks at the German Government’s record in its own EU decision-making and exposes how time and again it is too close to corporate interests.

A detailed summary of the findings and conclusions of two extensive reports on research public-private partnerships in the EU: the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) and the Bio-Based Industries (BBI) Joint Undertakings.

BBI is a public-private partnership between lobby groups representing the agribusiness, forestry, biotechnology, chemical, and fossil fuel industries on the one hand, and the European Commission’s DG Research & Innovation, ostensibly to help build a “sustainable low-carbon economy”.

This report asks whether the IMI’s health research truly delivers tangible benefits for citizens, such as better access to health innovations, or whether it is rather focused on enhancing the competitiveness of the largest pharmaceutical corporations.

The Energy Charter Treaty is becoming increasingly controversial – not least because of its potential to obstruct the energy transition. Nonetheless, many countries, particularly in the global south, are in the process of joining this dangerous agreement.