The very financial sector that funds pollution through massive investments has been allowed to take care of the problem themselves. It is deeply worrying that groups like the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) have captured the agenda of climate finance at the COP; and urgent to remove them from this privileged role.

Civil society groups urge the EU to reject an upcoming proposal by the European Commission on the certification of carbon removals. The new report demonstrates how the oil and gas industry uses it as part of their flawed ‘net zero’ plans to keep fossil fuels flowing, risking catastrophic climate impacts.

Welcome to a new autumn episode of EU Watchdog Radio. In this episode we will discuss the re-launch of one of CEO's flagship initiatives to create more transparency in EU decision making: LobbyFacts.eu. This tool was created by CEO and German sister organisation LobbyControl in 2015 and has now been improved and re-launched.

A significant number of European scientists active in biotechnology research, are actively lobbying for deregulating new gene editing techniques; While at the same time they have direct or indirect vested and undisclosed interests in the marketing of plants derived from those techniques via patents, patent applications or via links with the seed industry. That is revealed today by a new report commissioned by the Greens/EFA in the European Parliament: ‘Behind the smokescreen. Vested interests of EU scientists lobbying for GMO deregulation’.

The EU’s green ambitions are in great jeopardy. The agribusiness industry is using the cost-of-living crisis as an excuse to push stronger EU environmental legislation off the table and weaken already existing legislation. For instance, they are pushing against tighter pesticides rules and in favour of relaxing GMO rules. But the lobby is increasingly driven by GM researchers and institutes with links to industry or with vested interests. The Commission seems to be listening to these pro-deregulation voices and a proposal to change EU GMO rules is in the works.

NGOs are urgently demanding that proposed EU chemicals regulatory reform stays on track.

Brand new analysis by EU lobby data website LobbyFacts has revealed that the companies with the highest-declared lobby budgets have increased their spending by a third since 2015.

The biggest companies in the EU lobby transparency register have increased their annual EU lobby budget by one third in recent years. Find out more as Corporate Europe Observatory and LobbyControl re-launch their EU lobby data site LobbyFacts.eu

EU data website LobbyFacts.eu, coordinated by lobby watchdogs Corporate Europe Observatory and LobbyControl, shines a light on just how much money has been spent on lobbying in the past seven years, revealing that the companies with the highest declared lobby budgets have increased their spending by a third over this time.

CEO and the University of Bergen co-organised an event on 6 October 2022 in Brussels on the role of science in corporate lobbying, to commemorate Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring. Published 60 years ago, we owe to Rachel Carson's work the birth of the environment as a subject of public discourse and policies. Carson's book documented the devastating ecological impacts of pesticides, a theme that is still hot today. She was fiercely criticized by industry lobby, and chemical companies launched vicious anti-Carson campaigns.