Press

Several industry EU lobby groups are about to be entrusted again the privilege of co-deciding how €9.6 billion of public EU research funding should be used, in research areas as essential as healthcare, transportation, energy, biomass-based manufacturing processes or IT infrastructures.

Through numerous Freedom of Information requests to EU, Dutch and Belgian authorities,  lobby watchdog Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) uncovered a number of dubious lobby tactics employed by the biotech industry. Today CEO publishes all documents obtained over the last 2.5 years, since the ECJ ruling, as well as a briefing summarizing the findings.

The European Commission and some EU-member states are playing dirty in the WTO-debate on patents and accessCovid-19 vaccines. That is shown today by new research of lobby-watchdog Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO).

Three European civil society organisations (foodwatch, Corporate Europe Observatory, and Climáximo) have strongly criticised the ongoing practice of major companies sponsoring EU Council presidencies and have launched an email action to Portuguese Prime Minister Costa to tackle it.

From hospitals to care homes, the outsourcing and privatisation of healthcare, in combination with various austerity policies, have significantly degraded EU member states’ capacity to deal effectively with COVID-19, costing extra lives. A new report by lobby watchdog Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) published today shows that neoliberal reforms that weakened public healthcare systems were in part the result of EU policy pressures [1].

The European Ombudsman has today started investigating the European Commission's secrecy around its Covid-19 vaccine contracts with pharmaceutical companies and the negotiations that shaped these contracts [1]. This inquiry was sparked by complaints filed by Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) earlier this month against the Commission’s handling of two September 2020 Freedom of Information (FOI) requests. The Ombudsman has already contacted the Commission and asked for a response before 11 February.

In a new report Corporate Europe Observatory uncovers United Arab Emirates' PR strategy via various lobby vehicles in Brussels. The UAE has an image as a moderate and friendly key ally to the EU, yet its foreign policy aims are pursued in bloody wars from Yemen to Libya; and human rights abuses are rampant in the autocratic, oil-rich state.

The European Hydrogen Strategy (1), as announced by the European Commission in July, is in fact a ‘Trojan horse’ for the gas industry which managed to secure massive tax payers’ support for investments. That is one of the conclusions of a new investigative report ‘The hydrogen hype: Gas industry fairy tale or climate horror story?’, published today.

The European Commission did not properly consider conflicts of interest when it granted a contract to BlackRock - a big investor in fossil fuels - to advise on the EU’s new sustainable finance agenda for banks, according to a Decision by the European Ombudsman published today (1). The complainant, the Change Finance coalition, believes the Commission should now drop the contract and start afresh.