EU Watchdog Radio

In this episode of EU Watchdog Radio, Alma Kirchhoff, Research Assistant at Counter Balance, speaks with Zuzanna Warso, Director of Research at Open Future, about the lack of transparency surrounding European investment in AI and data centres.

They unpack critical questions about where public money is going, and what the rapid expansion of data centres means for energy systems and the environment. Can a climate bank invest in infrastructure that risks running counter to its own climate mandate?

Read the blog: Can the EIB be a Data Centres Bank and call itself a Climate Bank? 

Bayer and its lobby groups are trying to get Congress in the States to indemnify them against lawsuits, giving them complete legal protection. Listen to our brand new episode where CEO’s Nina Holland talks to Naomi Oreskes.

Naomi Oreskes is an historian of science, professor at Harvard University, she’s the author or co-author of 8 books, and over 150 articles and essays. She is the co-author, with Erik M. Conway, of the best-selling books ‘Merchants of Doubt’, and ‘The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loath Government and Love the Free Market’. ‘Merchants of Doubt’ identified parallels between the climate change debate and earlier different public controversies, notably the tobacco industry’s lobbying and propaganda campaign to obscure the link between smoking and lung cancer.

In this episode, Marilisa Marigliano, Policy Officer at Counter Balance, speaks with Frank Vanaerschot, Director at Counter Balance, about their new briefing on green public services.

As Europe faces rising living costs, energy crisis, and climate breakdown, they discuss how public investment can help deliver affordable housing, clean energy, and accessible public transport while accelerating decarbonisation.

Check out the briefing: https://counter-balance.org/publications/briefing/green-public-services-briefing/

We need to talk about what deregulation actually means in Brussels right now.

It means one commissioner holding 184 meetings with external actors, 182 of them with business groups. It means indigenous Sami reindeer herders in Sweden losing their last migration route to a fast-tracked mine. It means the public funding the polluters' infrastructure while they keep the profits.

In this episode of EU Watchdog Radio, Joana from Corporate Europe Observatory talks to colleagues Kenneth Haar and Rachel Tansey about their two new reports exposing the corporate machinery behind the EU's deregulation agenda — and the communities already bearing the costs.

This is not simplification. This is corporate capture.

Check out the reports:

- This is what corporate capture looks like!

- Permission to pollute

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In this episode, Marilisa Marigliano, Policy and Advocacy Officer at Counter Balance, speaks with Laëtitia Sédou, EU Project Manager at the European Network Against Arms Trade (ENAAT), about how EU public finance is fuelling the militarisation and boosting the global arms race.

Together, they explore how deregulation is reducing safeguards in favour of the military sector, and how major military companies are gaining access not only to public funding, but even to “sustainable” investment labels.

In this episode, Joana from Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) talks Nina Holland, agribiz researcher and campaigner at CEO, to Rachel Radvany, environmental health campaigner at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), and to Olivier De Schutter, legal scholar and university professor specialising in economic and social rights, who served served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food from 2008 to 2014 and, in 2020 was appointed UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.

Together with CIEL, CEO launched a briefing into how the industry blocks regulation of toxic chemicals. It’s called “The pollution playbook”. What a great episode!

While negotiations for the next EU budget are underway, the European Commission’s plan to set up the European Competitiveness Fund (ECF) as the main vehicle to achieve its clean industrial agenda. In today’s episode Marilisa Marigliano talks with Angela Wigger and Rodrigo Fernandez to debunk the InvestEU program, which is set to be the cornerstone of the ECF, raising urgent questions about who benefits, an who actually decides the direction of Europe’s green transition. They expose the power relations and governance flaws that open the door for distortions in achieving a truly just transition in European industry. Are there alternatives to the current industrial policy? What would a transformative agenda look like?

In this episode, Joana and Pascoe, co-directors of Corporate Europe Observatory's new documentary "The scramble for hydrogen in South Africa" talk about the process behind the making of the film. It's a more relaxed and informal episode than usual, where you can get to know the whole truth behind the making of the film, and how you can host your very own screening!

In this episode, Isabela Franco and Lora Verheecke from Counter Balance unpack the EU’s growing push for critical raw materials and its implications for the Global South. They discuss the Global Gateway, the Critical Raw Materials Act, the use of public funds to “de-risk” private investments and the lack of meaningful participation for impacted communities and Indigenous people. A concise and critical look at how Europe’s green, digital and defence ambitions risk reinforcing extractivist and neocolonial models.

Do you know how much money Big Tech is spending on lobbying in Brussels? How has this amount been increasing? On what is the money being funnelled to and what can we do about it? Listen to our new episode of the podcast EU Watchdog Radio to find out!