Other climate battles

Find out how a proposed EU law that seeks to hold companies accountable for abuses in their supply chains has been watered down by corporate lobbyists, with assistance from the EU's business-friendly ‘Better regulation’ agenda.

The Commission ignored massive conflicts of interest when it hired the world’s biggest asset management fund to investigate the best way to make banking sustainable. “The BlackRock Model”, a report from CEO and Change Finance uncovers the scale of the blunder, and explains why the Commission needs to find a new approach to ‘sustainable finance’.

BlackRock is a major fossil fuel investor. So why has the European Commission given it a key role to provide paid advice on the crucial ‘sustainable finance’ dossier? Documents obtained by Corporate Europe Observatory show the Commission didn’t even consider the conflicts of interest.

They meet at birthday parties, over breakfast meetings, during cocktail receptions; so just how close are Europe’s dirtiest industries to senior politicians and regulators? And what influence is this lobbying having on the EU’s official climate change policy? These are the kind of questions we need to be asking as leaders from the 28 EU member states try to reach agreement on Europe’s climate targets for 2030. This scrutiny is particularly urgent because – as this privileged access might imply – these industries appear to have been extremely successful at watering down EU climate and energy