Articles

Last December’s EU summit was to agree on a controversial new policy tool of “contractual agreements” to make EU member states stick to a course of neoliberal reform. But internal rifts in the Council are delaying the project, providing trade unions and other social movements with an opportunity to stop the flood of attacks on social rights.

Commissioner Barnier has surprisingly announced a temporary ban on meetings with the financial lobby. An important and telling step, but more is needed if the objective is to curb the lobbying power of the banks.

It's 7am and the crowds are beginning to arrive, weaving their way out of the darkness towards the blazing bonfire, flaming hay bales and wooden pallets warming up what would ordinarily be a very busy crossroad in the middle of the EU quarter, Brussels. Instead it has been occupied by farmers and their tractors, students, trade unionists, young and old, men and women, activists and those who feel it's the right thing to do.

Faced with the threat of a highly critical verdict from the European Ombudsman just before Christmas, the Commission quietly smuggled out an announcement that a controversial appointee to its ethics committee had been replaced, presumably hoping to take the sting out of what could have been a very uncomfortable media tale for the Commission. Afterall, it is not every day that the Commission's position is called “inconceivable and naïve” by another EU institution. Some media appear to have bought the line that this was simply a change-of-personnel story … and therefore missed a much bigger and

Two new revolving door cases published today by Corporate Europe Observatory illustrate how the revolving door continues to spin between the EU institutions and the corporate sector, and how the EU needs a far tougher approach to tackling potential conflicts of interest.

With a new directive on tobacco being passed and the negotiations for a trade deal with the US getting started, 2013 has seen intense lobbying battles and CEO has been following them closely. The ban on some bee-killing pesticides, the investment arbitration boom and conflicts of interests at the European Food Safety Authority have also been among the hottest issues in CEO's research and campaigning work. Here are the most read stories this year, according to our website statistics. Have you missed any of them?

Corporate Europe Observatory has written a letter to EFSA, to urge the food safety agency to take concrete steps to ban conflicts of interest on its expert panels. A short report published by CEO and Beelife titled "OPERA Research Center, a front group for the pesticide industry in the bee debate", attached to the letter, shows that this list needs urgent and critical revision.

Yesterday (19 December 2013) the Ombudsman published a damning report into the European Commission's re-appointment of a lawyer with links to the tobacco industry to its ad hoc ethical committee. Here NGOs comment on the ruling which could set an important precedent on handling possible conflicts of interest in the future.

Huge unclarity remains about what was actually decided last week about the future of the EU's lobby transparency register at the final meeting of the group of MEPs and Commission officials tasked with reviewing the register.