Europe’s scramble for green hydrogen in South Africa will have a devastating impact on local communities, the very same ones whose voices are being ignored by EU policy makers.
From Rome to Prague, Brussels to London, politicians are welcoming fossil fuel companies as advisers instead of arsonists, failing to recognise their vested interests and their role in creating, prolonging, and profiting from the energy crisis.
Our new report exposes how corporations have used the EU Single Market to obstruct progressive legislation like social housing measures, progressive healthcare reforms, protection from harmful substances as well bans on short-distance flights.
Our new report maps Germany’s 'brave new hydrogen world'. Which looks a lot like the old world: prolonging fossil fuel use and continuing its extractivist logic. We show who is driving the German – and thus EU – hydrogen hype, who benefits, and the negative impacts for prospective green hydrogen export countries.
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.
In order to tackle the grave threat of the biodiversity crisis, the EU will table a proposal for targets for the reduction of pesticide use. This has put the pesticide industry into survival mode. A new leaked document from pesticides lobby group CropLife Europe shows that while it talks a big talk about backing the Green Deal, in reality it is employing a wide variety of lobbying tactics to undermine ambitious, binding targets.
In January 2022, France will take on the rotating Presidency of the Council of the EU. Yet this Presidency has been prepared in close collaboration with the French corporate sector, and is setting a policy agenda that strongly reflects business demands. It looks set to be a captured presidency.
In January France will take over the Presidency of the EU Council for six months. But the early signs are worrying that this will be a pro-corporate presidency which prioritises a handful of corporate ‘champions’, and an ever greater role for big business in policy-making.
The European Commission said it wants to avoid giving billions in bailouts to the fossil fuel industry like it did in 2008 - but it’s doing just that: In Italy, France, Portugal and the Spanish State, €8.3 billion of EU recovery funds will be spent on hydrogen and renewable gases, thanks to fierce industry lobbying at national and EU level.
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