Articles

Now that the dust has settled on the hearings of the commissioners-designate in the European Parliament, it is time for some critical reflections on the messy, partisan and in several other ways fundamentally flawed process for appointing arguably the most powerful people in the whole EU infrastructure.

An internal document shows the Commission and Council have initiated a coordinated “information campaign” on TTIP. But one thing is missing.

Is it appropriate to let a former board member of a Deutsche Bank investment fund go straight from there to a key position in the new European supervisory structure for banks? What's the problem with hiring people with strong links to financial corporations to monitor the big banks? Or to be part of decisions on whether measures to ensure financial stability should be imposed on them or not? And can they keep working in the financial sector at the same time? If you ask the European Central Bank, there is absolutely no problem with this scenario.

A crusade for big business-friendly deregulation, waged during José Manuel Barroso's Presidency of the European Commission, shows no signs of stopping. This neoliberal push to weaken or block new legislation appears likely to expand with Jean-Claude Juncker's new Commission team.

CEO just responded to the European Ombudsman’s public consultation on transparency in the negotiations over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), outlining suggestions for ending the secrecy in the EU-US trade talks.

Answer the call from the D19-20 Alliance in Belgium to take to the streets against TTIP and austerity on Friday 19th December 2014, as the second day of the European Council Summit unfolds

Our correspondence with Pr. Anne Glover, the current Chief Scientific Adviser to the President of the European Commission (CSA), on her role in the European Commission's review of endocrine disrupting chemicals shows how the very existence of her position was used by business-friendly interests to convey key messages to the top of the European Commission's hierarchy, playing a determining role in the massive delay now inflicted to the European Commission's handling of this important public health regulation. We ask that the CSA position is not renewed in the new Juncker Commission.

Will EFSA become more transparent, and to lobbyists or scientists? After its public consultation on its draft transparency policy, the Authority must now choose.

The European Parliament has overwhelmingly voted in favour of freezing the budgets of the Commission's problematic advisory groups, formally known as Expert Groups. Surprisingly, this is the second time in four years that the Parliament has taken such a drastic step, after the Commission failed to tackle corporate domination within these influential groups (see graph below).