Articles

CEO has reported a lot about Dalligate, the tobacco cash-for-influence lobby scandal that led to the downfall, in mysterious and contested circumstances, of former health Commissioner John Dalli. One of the reasons Dalligate is such a juicy affair is that it starkly illustrates the problems with voluntary lobby transparency and with inadequate management of the conflicts of interest that arise from the revolving-door – public officials becoming big business lobbyists, and vice versa.

Thursday, 11 April 2013 To: Members of the European Parliament Brussels Dear Member of the European Parliament The ETS needs replacing with real emission reduction measures

The report "EU ETS myth busting" has been co-published by more than 40 organisations, including Corporate Europe Observatory. It shows that far from being the ‘best tool’ to combat climate change, the EU ETS is inherently too weak to drive the sustainable energy transformation the EU needs in order to stay within global warming limits. It is systemically flawed and cannot be fixed.

Corporate Europe Observatory, Carbon Trade Watch and Fern have nominated the European Commission and the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme for the Greenwash Circus Awards 2013. They argue the EU ETS needs to be exposed for what it is, a subsidy for the worst polluters that the Commission is using to avoid effective climate policies and is irresponsibly expanding it into other regions and areas.

Private letters reveal Syngenta and Bayer’s furious lobbying against EU measures to save bees. Will the pesticide lobby succeed in convincing Member States to vote no to a ban?

From 5 to 8 April, a number of organisations came together in Budapest for the Food Sovereignty Programme meeting organised by Friends of the Earth International. At the end of the meeting the participants approved a statement supporting the struggle against land grab in Hungary. The following statement was issued by:

Particularly significant is the proposal on structural reforms, first put forward last year by President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy. Fundamentally the Commission would require eurozone member states to sign bilateral contracts – a so-called “Convergence and Competitiveness Instrument” – on a number of structural reforms. In exchange for compliance the member state would be rewarded with financial incentives.