Press

Over more than one year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the European Commission has held meetings primarily with representatives of Big Pharma or the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (1) and associated organizations like ‘Global Citizen’. The Commission has listened almost exclusively to this echo chamber which pushes protecting Big Pharma patent rights, despite the way they are exacerbating global vaccine apartheid.

The study released today by the European Commission on products from new GM techniques like CRISPR-Cas shows that the institution has been lending its ears almost entirely to the biotech industry. The study suggests that the current EU GMO rules may not be “fit for purpose” for some new GM applications. It is a clear first step to the deregulation of these techniques, which would mean no safety checks for the environment or public health, nor consumer labelling.

The biggest pharmaceutical companies have proved to be staunch opponents of sharing technology on COVID vaccines and medicines. In particular, they are fiercely opposed to a proposal to temporarily suspend intellectual property rights on vaccines and medicines for the duration of the pandemic, as proposed by India and South Africa at the World Trade Organization. And after lobby meetings the European Commission basically agreed to the wishes of the pharmaceutical industry. 

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.