Expert groups

ECB advisory groups are used as lobby platforms by the financial industry, our new report shows. 'Open door for forces of finance at the ECB' reveals that the advisory groups counselling the European Central Bank are dominated by representatives of some of the most influential global financial corporations.

Next Tuesday, the European Parliament's employment committee will vote on a directive that, quite literally, is a life-and-death issue. On the table: the revision of EU laws to protect workers from cancer-causing substances at work.

New study on the Commission's legislative advisory groups highlights a continuing Big Business bias - despite Commission's new rules.

After years of claiming there was no need, the Commission has finally reformed the horizontal rules that govern its advisory groups, formally called 'Expert Groups'. There are two positive changes, relics from the last Commission, yet the reforms leave big business unchallenged in dominating the groups and therefore steering policy. Is this the end of Expert Group reform for another five years, or will the European Parliament have one last throw of the dice?

A coalition of civil society groups working on lobbying transparency and ethics regulations have called on European Commission Vice President, Frans Timmermans, to wait until the European Parliament and the public have had a chance to comment before introducing new rules on advisory groups, formally known as Expert Groups

Comments on the European Commission's new Scientific Advice Mechanism by Corporate Europe Observatory and the Fondation Sciences Citoyennes

In closing her investigation into DG AGRI's 'Expert Groups', the European Ombudsman has called for more transparency as well as structural measures to ensure groups are more balanced.

The European Ombudsman has opened a case on the European Commission's industry-dominated Expert Group on the risky and dangerous practice of 'fracking for natural gas.

Following the publication of the Carte Blance for Fracking report earlier this year, CEO and Friends of the Earth Europe have submitted a complaint to the European Ombudsman about the industry dominated advisory group convened by the Commission to get fracking introduced through the back door.

Has the issue of tax avoidance ever been as important as in the current era of (Commission-backed) austerity? Public budgets continue to be slashed for want of public money, yet the news is filled with corporations avoiding taxes at the same time as their profits are at a record high. So it should be of serious concern to Europe's 500 million citizens that the European Commission has invited to its new advisory group on taxation the very same organisations involved in avoiding it, as well as their tax advisors.