Articles

The European Central Bank is "helping" the Commission and the Council design a future Financial Transaction Tax for Europe. This should be of major concern to its proponents, as the ECB can only be expected to side with the financial lobby.

This week marks the first round of negotiations for a far-reaching transatlantic trade deal. In the face of growing opposition to plans for expanded corporate powers in the proposed pact, the European Commission is trying to dispel concerns with propaganda. See through the rosy PR with Corporate Europe Observatory’s guide to investor-state dispute settlement.

With a crucial European Parliament ENVI committee vote on new tobacco legislation taking place later this week, this new report sheds some light on the extent and scope of tobacco lobbying in the Parliament.

The first round of negotiations of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Agreement (TTIP) is starting today in Washington. With an open letter to President Obama, EU Commission President Barroso and EU Council President Van Rompuy, more than 60 organisations from Europe and the US have raised their voice. The letter shows their concerns about the coming negotiations and states their opposition to the use of behind-closed-door trade negotiations to change and lower public interest measures for the sake of commercial interests. CEO is one of the signatories.

The European Parliament has this week adopted the new Staff Regulations. CEO welcomes the steps in the right direction, to help curb conflicts of interest that arise through revolving door between public officials and corporate lobbyists. These include a cooling-off period on certain lobby jobs for senior officials, as well as transparency around these cases. But ending the privileged access and undue influence that the revolving door gives to big business and their lobby groups will require more.

Ahead of the backloading vote at the European Parliament that will take place July 2nd , a coalition of 44 civil society organisations released a statement rejecting the EU ETS, which they say is entrenching fossil fuel use in the EU. They call for MEP attention to be re-directed urgently toward genuine measures to tackle climate change, including a phase-out of fossil-fuels.

Merkel and Hollande have given key positioning to the European Roundtable of Industrialists and their corporate wish-list. They are set to influence a future Competitiveness Pact – a next step towards authoritarian neoliberalism.

After months and months of delay on the review of the rules that govern EU insitution staff – the Staff Regulations – the Commission, Parliament and Council are now finalising the process known as trialogues, where they hash out agreement on the contentious issues and the finer details. It is in these final stages that, amongst the difficult issues of staff pay cuts and working hours, the importance of ensuring robust and far-reaching rules to govern conflicts of interest that arise through the revolving-door must be remembered.

As the European Parliament this week plans to vote on the Commission's proposed amendments to its agrofuels policy, we look at the range of lobby strategies the industry is employing against the amendments, from front groups and trips abroad for MEPs to scientific disinformation.