Articles

Brussels, 22 June - Two years after its introduction the European Commission's lobby register has failed to bring lobbying into the open,the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation in the EU (ALTER-EU) said today. The group used the anniversary of the register to call on the Commission to take urgent steps towards a mandatory, joint register for the European Commission and European Parliament with improved transparency standards.

CIAA's €1-billion campaign to promote the GDA labelling system was clearly a key element in its political strategy to combat other, stricter labelling options which it feared would damage sales of unhealthy food, such as the 'traffic light' system.

How investment fund lobbyists used SMEs as a front to lobby MEPs

In the battle over the regulation of hedge funds and private equity funds currently taking place in Brussels, hundreds of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) surprisingly spoke out in April in support of the financial lobby’s attempt to stave off regulation. But behind the scenes, a lobby organisation, the European Venture Capital Association – representing large and controversial investment funds was pulling the strings.

Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) has collected more than twenty e-mails from industry lobbyists with “voting recommendations” for MEPs ahead of the ENVI committee vote, in March 2010, on the ‘Sommer report’ about the new EU regulation on food labelling.

In this interview with Corporate Europe Observatory, MEP Carl Schlyter, member of the Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI), reflects on one of the biggest lobbying battles in Brussels in recent years on food labelling regulation.

In June, MEPs voted on new legislation on food labelling – determining what nutritional information should be displayed on the packaging of items such as snacks, soft drinks and ready-meals. The vote has been the subject of a major lobby campaign by the food industry, opposed to mandatory information on food packaging.