Articles

It's a year ago this week that the Sunday Times reported that a high-level official from the Commission’s trade department had offered to leak commercially sensitive information in return for financial rewards. Undercover reporters from the UK newspaper posing as lobbyists for a Chinese businessman offered the official – Fritz-Harald Wenig – a payment of € 100.000. Wenig was reported to have suggested putting the money in a frozen bank account which he would be able to access after he retired.

Industry lobbying to water down the proposed EU investment fund directive is intensifying week by week. Earlier this year Corporate Europe Observatory showed how the European Commission’s voluntary register in fact revealed very little about the tremendous levels of lobbying by the financial services industry.

A large number of think tanks which receive funding from the EU Commission are boycotting the Commission’s lobby transparency register, as Commissioner Kallas recently highlighted. “I find it surprising that think tanks that receive substantial amounts of Commission funding, including 17 of the top 20 recipients, have not followed our invitation to join,” Kallas commented. “In fact, some of those we support are the least co-operative.

El mes de maio 2009, la Mesa Redonda de Soja Responsable (RTRS) se reunio para acordar nuevos standards para la "soja responsable". El nuevo esquema de certificacion podria ser aceptado por la UE para garantizar que soja certificada pueda ser usada para agrocombustibles en Europa.