conflict of interest

Thanks to bottom-up pressure the European Union stepped back from supporting Trump and his big polluters’ agenda, but fell short of backing calls for a conflict of interest policy at the UN climate talks.

New report exposes how the industries most responsible for climate change, especially fossil fuel TNCs, are obstructing real progress to address the climate crisis

CEO reviews recent developments in the Commission's approach to the revolving door.

One in three (9 out of 26) outgoing commissioners who left office in 2014 have gone through the 'revolving door' into roles in corporations or other organisations with links to big business, leading to fears of an unhealthily close relationship between the EU's executive body and private interests. In our view, at least eight revolving door roles, held by four commissioners, should not have received authorisation at all, due to the risk of possible conflicts of interest.

The way in which the Commission has appointed the head of its “in-house think-tank” has demonstrated its woefully inadequate conflict of interest assessment for new appointments, says Corporate Europe Observatory. The conflict of interest assessment applied to the former chief of the Lisbon Council, Ann Mettler as head of the new European Political Strategy Center (EPSC) does not appear to have explored her close cooperation with some of the biggest corporate players in the digital and technology market.

The 'cash for access' scandal in the UK has taken the House of Commons by storm and prompted a vote about banning certain second jobs for MPs. CEO looks at what the scandal shows us about the loopholes in the European Parliament's own rules and procedures.

Now that the dust has settled on the hearings of the commissioners-designate in the European Parliament, it is time for some critical reflections on the messy, partisan and in several other ways fundamentally flawed process for appointing arguably the most powerful people in the whole EU infrastructure.

Is it appropriate to let a former board member of a Deutsche Bank investment fund go straight from there to a key position in the new European supervisory structure for banks? What's the problem with hiring people with strong links to financial corporations to monitor the big banks? Or to be part of decisions on whether measures to ensure financial stability should be imposed on them or not? And can they keep working in the financial sector at the same time?
If you ask the European Central Bank, there is absolutely no problem with this scenario.

New research on the safety assessment of four controversial chemicals shows that two thirds (67%) of the scientists involved had at least one, and some many more, conflicts of interest due to their links to industries impacted by the assessments.

Here are some examples of the blurry line between private business and public office that have characterised the Spanish nominee for the Climate Action and Energy Commissioner Arias Cañete’s career.