Articles

The European Commission’s decision earlier this month to approve ex-Commissioner Günter Verheugen’s setting up of his own lobby consultancy firm went against the advice of the Commission’s own ethics committee. Internal documents reveal a complete lack of stringency in the approvals procedure. This underlines the urgent need to tighten the Commission’s ethics rules well beyond what is proposed in the new draft Code of Conduct for Commissioners.

In a speech in Davos, South African President Jacob Zuma, host of the international climate talks scheduled to take place in Durban later this year, urged business to be a party at the talks and play a bigger role. His comments will have been welcomed by business leaders, particularly the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) who have long campaigned for greater involvement.

This new report by the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU) report reviews the evolution of the Code of Conduct for Commissioners and explains how we have arrived at such a lax system of oversight.

To what extent will a right-wing French MP sympathetic to big business and French government's ongoing manoeuvres to create a "corporate confidentiality" label endanger critical reporting on corporations and business transparency?

Ex-commissioner Günter Verheugen is not the only Commission official who just ignored the rules about seeking approval for a new job ( Verheugen failed to inform the Commission of his new lobby consultancy firm, the European Experience Company).

A recent draft Commission proposal to change the legislation governing genetically modified (GM) foods and feeds has revealed that the Commission is giving in to a long-standing combined demand from the biotech, food and animal feed industry to break down the so-called ‘zero-tolerance policy’ regarding contamination with non-authorised GM food and feed.