Press

Civil society calls out the EU’s attempt to push more of the same failed carbon markets favoured by the biggest polluters, and urges countries to leave Warsaw with real climate solutions in the wake of the devastating super typhoon in Philippines.

Almost 60% of experts sitting on the European Food Safety Authority's (EFSA) panels have direct or indirect links with industries regulated by the agency, according to an independent screening performed by Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) and freelance journalist Stéphane Horel.

Europe's public food safety watchdog EFSA is still not up to its responsibilities when it comes to transparency. A coalition of civil society groups denounces the secrecy around safety studies, ahead of EFSA’s conference on transparency that will take place in Parma.

The new code of conduct for MEPs is failing to prevent potential conflict of interest situations, finds a new report released today. The research details the cases of five individual MEPs who risk potential conflicts of interest, since they have financial or other links with companies and industry groups that have a direct interest in European Parliament legislation and are involved in lobbying MEPs

CEO today appealed to the European Court of Justice a ruling from the EU’s General Court over information related to the EU-India free trade talks, which the European Commission shared with corporate lobby groups but later withheld from the public. A donation call has been launched to cover the legal costs of the appeal.

Little will be done to curb harmful food speculation today as EU finance ministers meet to approve their position on the new Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II). Loopholes in the legislation will render it ineffective to prevent food speculation, and the resulting food price spikes that hit the poorest the hardest.

The European Commission and European Parliament's joint lobby register turns two years old this week, and a new report by the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU) shows that the voluntary register is still failing to get a sufficient share of lobbyists to register and remains packed with unreliable and incomplete data. ALTER-EU calls on the Commission and Parliament to use the opportunity of the register's review to make the Transparency Register mandatory.