Articles

The number of entries in the Commission’s voluntary lobby transparency register has now passed 2,000 (753 of which are Brussels-based). The Commission celebrated this as a big success, but in fact the rate of participation is still below 1/3 of Brussels-based lobbies (estimated as 2,600 in an European Parliament report from 2000). Among the recent sign-ups are some big fish, but their reports beg a few questions.

What is the future vision for agrofuels? This was the topic under debate at an event organised on October 6 by the European Voice in the European Parliament with sponsorship from Shell. Panellists from Shell, UNICA (the association of Brazilian sugar cane growers), WWF, the European Commission, EU presidency Sweden and the Parliament debated the outstanding issues of the EU agrofuel policy. Key was the significance of indirect land use change (ILUC) - when the expansion of agrofuel production in one place pushes the production of other crops (for example food) elsewhere.

On 6 October, Forum Europe and the Norway-based Bellona Foundation brought together a room packed with industry players together in luxury hotel in the Brussels EU quarter to talk about EU funding possibilities for CCS and how to make CCS accepted by the public.

On 6 October, Forum Europe and the Norway-based Bellona Foundation brought together a room packed with industry players together in luxury hotel in the Brussels EU quarter to talk about EU funding possibilities for CCS and how to make CCS accepted by the public.

The Belgian daily newspaper De Standaard has this week published an interesting series of articles on EU lobbying. While one article covers the critical perspective of lobby watchdog groups like Corporate Europe Observatory, De Standaard also published a lengthy interview with Russell Patten, who leads the Brussels office of lobby consultancy giant Grayling Global.

After the Commission’s refusal last week to disclose the declaration of Pat Cox’s “professional activities”, Corporate Europe Observatory has now also received a more general reply from the Commission about the issue of Mr. Cox’s conflicts of interest. Remarkably, the Commission argues that the conflicts of interest rules of its Health and Consumers department (DG SANCO) do not apply in the case of Mr. Cox.