Articles

CIAA's €1-billion campaign to promote the GDA labelling system was clearly a key element in its political strategy to combat other, stricter labelling options which it feared would damage sales of unhealthy food, such as the 'traffic light' system.

A few days from now it will be two years since the European Commission launched its voluntary lobby register. The critique of the shortcomings of the register will be well known to readers of this blog. Only a minority of Brussels-based lobbies are registered and the data of those who have joined are often unreliable (some over-estimate their lobby spending, most under-report).

How investment fund lobbyists used SMEs as a front to lobby MEPs In the battle over the regulation of hedge funds and private equity funds currently taking place in Brussels, hundreds of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) surprisingly spoke out in April in support of the financial lobby’s attempt to stave off regulation. But behind the scenes, a lobby organisation, the European Venture Capital Association – representing large and controversial investment funds was pulling the strings.

Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) has collected more than twenty e-mails from industry lobbyists with “voting recommendations” for MEPs ahead of the ENVI committee vote, in March 2010, on the ‘Sommer report’ about the new EU regulation on food labelling.

In this interview with Corporate Europe Observatory, MEP Carl Schlyter, member of the Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI), reflects on one of the biggest lobbying battles in Brussels in recent years on food labelling regulation.

In June, MEPs voted on new legislation on food labelling – determining what nutritional information should be displayed on the packaging of items such as snacks, soft drinks and ready-meals. The vote has been the subject of a major lobby campaign by the food industry, opposed to mandatory information on food packaging.

More than 240 civil society groups, including farmers' organisations, have signed a letter opposing the RTRS proposals for 'responsible' soy. Civil society says the label, which does not prevent deforestation and which will all GM soy to be considered 'responsible' will be meaningless. See the full letter and signatures here:

On the second day of the EU's Green Week, an action group took the stage during a session of the 2-day policy summit titled ‘Pricing the earth: How business can protect and profit from biodiversity’. The 'summit' was organised by Friends of Europe, a corporate-sponsored think tank. The activists spread a red banner reading ‘Green Week is as green as this banner’ and one listing the companies behind Friends of Europe, including BP, Dow, Areva and Coca Cola.

We invite all organisations to sign the Open Letter below, opposing the 'responsible' label for monoculture soy (including GM soy), developed by the industry's Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS). Please find the text of the letter below and attached. The RTRS is holding its 5th conference 9-10 June 2010 in Sao Paolo, Brazil. It is expected that the label will be launched in Europe some time after the conference. This is the time to once more voice strong opposition to this greenwashing of industrial soy!