Articles

Aquiris is the name of a consortium that was created in 2001 by Veolia Environnement, the biggest water services corporation in the world, and other companies to bid for the building and operation of the North Brussels wastewater treatment plant (WWTP), a €1.2 billion contract. Prior to that, most of Brussels' wastewater was not treated but dumped raw in rivers, an option which is no longer acceptable under a 1991 EU Directive (91/271/EEC) concerning urban wastewater treatment which requires all European cities to treat their wastewater before disposal.

Corporate Europe Observatory and Greenpeace European Unit, along with nineteen other organisations have written to the members of the STOA-panel of the European Parliament, to raise concerns about an upcoming seminar they are holding on the EU GMO policy. This seminar is organised in cooperation with the Public Research Regulation Initiative (PRRI), an industry-biased pro-GMO lobbygroup, despite its name and pretentions.

During the recent World Trade Organisation (WTO) ministerial in Geneva (30 November to 2 December 2009), protesters put the spotlight on some of the big businesses in town. With little going on inside the ministerial, they organised daily guided tours to banks, agricultural and energy traders to show that there's more to Geneva than international organisations, humanitarianism and luxury watches – and more to trade negotiations than conflicts between the US and India. Because it is companies that benefit and quite often also co-write global trade rules.

While some corporate climate lobby groups have in public lamented the failure of the UN climate talks in Copenhagen to reach a strong agreement, behind closed doors, many of them are relieved. Indeed, if there was any attempt to agree meaningful action on climate change in Copenhagen, a number of big business players had been working hard to prevent it. This article looks at the corporate lobbyists who were nominated for the Angry Mermaid Award ahead of Copenhagen – and asks what they achieved.

Water flows from the taps of EU citizens mainly thanks to public water companies. The exception is France (and more recently the UK), where private companies have also managed and maintained water and sewage systems. But the new French Commissioner for DG Internal Market, Michel Barnier, suggested all this could perhaps change when he appeared before the European Parliament last week.

Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) has sent a joint open letter to the European Commission to highlight concerns about "revolving doors" after the former head of the European Food Standards Agency GMO panel became a lobbyist for Syngenta. The European Food Standards Agency failed to intervene to impose a "cooling off" period before the move - which creates a clear conflict of interest.

There was both good and bad news from the Parliament’s hearing with designate Commissioner Šefčovič today. On the positive side, Šefčovič confirmed that he will continue the European Transparency Initiative and that he will put pressure on law firms to join the lobby register. He also acknowledged that the Commission needs stronger rules for Commission staff going through the revolving door into industry lobbying.