Articles

Corporate lobbyists are fighting a proposed EU law that seeks to hold companies accountable for human rights abuses and environmental destruction. While some employ outright hostility and are clear that they don’t want the law in the first place, more insidious are those companies that while appearing cooperative, seek to fatally weaken the rules. We reveal the tactics used to undermine this law that seeks to stop corporate impunity and would require companies to exercise ‘due diligence’ along their global supply chains.

On 20 May the EU Council of Ministers discussed their collective position over a proposal to waive Big Pharma’s patent monopolies on COVID vaccines and treatment. But they are keeping these crucial discussions hidden behind closed doors. It’s only thanks to leaked documents that we have an insight into the official Council position – the EU member states’ common position – on one of the major global political battles of our time.

Big Pharma is currently waging a fierce lobbying battle to protect its monopoly patent rights for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. While Corporate Europe Observatory broadly outlines the sector's lobby spending, this is likely to be an underestimate of Big Pharma's true firepower; and up-to-date lobbying information and details are hard to come by. Weak EU lobby transparency rules are hampering the public scrutiny that is more needed than ever now during the pandemic.

“The Ombudsman is concerned about the potential risk of conflicts of interest.” These concerns led the European Ombudsman’s office to launch an inquiry into the European Defence Agency’s handling of the request by its former Chief Executive to allow him to become a lobbyist for Airbus.

CEO is hiring two new colleagues to join our communications team.

Who meets the European Commission to discuss the scarcity of COVID vaccines and medicines in Europe and globally? An investigation of recent meetings show a disconcerting pattern: only those not questioning big pharma’s monopoly on patents seem to be allowed in. While mega-philanthropist Bill Gates and the pro-patent lobby are a powerful force influencing the EU’s response, proponents of COVID technology-sharing face closed doors.

In this new episode of EU Watchdog Radio we dive into the issue of plains, trains, cars and bicycles aka transport policy and why this is such a powerful issue in the context of climate change and healthy societies.

The self-serving arguments used by big pharma lobbyists at meetings with the European Commission to defend monopoly intellectual property rights on vaccines are demonstrably false. Corporate Europe Observatory has uncovered new documents from December 2020 which reveal how big pharma’s arguments – essentially, to ‘keep the patents in our hands, and trust us to distribute vaccines’ – contrast sharply with the current state-of-affairs: few in low-income countries will be vaccinated any time soon.

The European Commission proposes to have industry co-decide how €9.6 billion of EU public research money should be used. The Member States now have to decide if they accept expanding the highly problematic model of EU Joint Undertakings, very large industry-driven public-private research partnerships, in the EU’s new research funding programme Horizon Europe.