Flagship reports

For the past two years, an unprecedented Europe-wide public controversy about a once-unknown element in international trade agreements has kept citizens, politicians and the media on their toes. It’s all been about the so-called investor-state dispute settlement system, in short, ISDS.

The ongoing EU-US trade negotiations, TTIP, seek to bring rules on both sides of the Atlantic together by means of so-called regulatory cooperation. Our new report with LobbyControl "Dangerous Regulatory Duet" finds that regulatory cooperation procedures have already been used to delay, water down and prevent legislation in the public interest.

Two separate developments on European regulatory issues – regulatory cooperation under TTIP and the "Better Regulation Agenda" – are set to introduce a new style of rulemaking in the EU, one that would introduce severe obstacles to anything that would against the interests of multinational corporations in the EU and the US. 

A new briefing in English (below) by AITEC and CEO explains why TTIP, and especially regulatory cooperation, could put a stranglehold on our ability to create the energy transition required to tackle climate change.

In response to the criticism of the controversial investor rights in TTIP, a number of law firms recently founded a think tank designed to protect the current investment arbitration system: The European Federation for Investment Law and Arbitration (EFILA).

Despite a manifest presence of “the financial lobby” in the EU decision-making, until now there has been no comprehensive survey of its size and power in the EU. A new report by CEO, ÖGB Europabüro and AK EUROPA is intended to fill that void. The findings are stunning. In total the financial industry spends more than €120 million per year on lobbying in Brussels and employs more than 1700 lobbyists.

What would fill the void if the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) were allowed to collapse? This briefing shows that ending the ETS would not leave a climate policy void.

A small club of international law firms, arbitrators and financial speculators are fuelling lawsuits by foreign investors against states that cost taxpayers billions of dollars and prevent legislation in the public interest. Emblematic cases include tobacco giant Philip Morris suing Uruguay and Australia over health warnings on cigarette packets, and Swedish energy multinational Vattenfall seeking $3.7bn from Germany following that country’s decision to phase-out nuclear energy.