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!

In this episode, Lora Verheecke, Policy Officer at Counter Balance, interviewed Hikma Bachegour, an Assistant Professor in the Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University in Fez, Morocco. They highlighted the impacts of European hydrogen projects in Morocco and how it could affect vulnerable communities, women, and gender minorities, who are too often left out of the decision-making process.

Stay tuned to a brand new season of EU Watchdog Radio, where new hosts Isabela Franco and Lora Verheecke from Counter Balance join Marcella Via and Joana Louçã from Corporate Europe Observatory.

New episodes coming soon!

Listen to the brand new podcast episode of EU Watchdog Radio, where CEO's campaigner and researcher Kenneth Haar discusses the link between the announced trade tariffs from the USA to the EU and deregulation. He presents the 5 buzzwords that you need to know in order to understand the deregulation agenda of the European Commission.

Listen to our new podcast episode, where Nina Holland talks about the intense lobby battle that the biotech industry has been waging to get its new generation of genetic modification techniques excluded from European GMO regulations. 

GMO stands for genetically modified organisms. This will mean that crops or wild plants made by using this new generation of genetic modification techniques, will no longer be subject to safety checks, monitoring or consumer labelling.

The underlying key word for today’s episode is deregulation, and that is a complicated word because it can sound interesting, like it can sound that it will allow people or things to, I don't know, to go about their lives more easily, not so burdened by bureaucracy. However, what deregulation here actually refers to is the scrapping of rules to protect health and the environment. It is an argument used by the industry whenever they don’t want to be supervised and their products to be, well, regulated and maybe even labelled to tell consumers how they were produced, as is the case with GMOs.

Last week, Brussels went reeling under another corruption scandal! This time it's Chinese big tech giant Huawei whose offices just behind the European Parliament have been raided - along with those of 15 former and current MEPs from the EPP and S&D groups. Huawei is, according to the Belgian prosecutors, being investigated for ”active corruption within the European Parliament," including "remuneration for taking political positions, excessive gifts like food and travel expenses and regular invitations to football matches ... with a view to promoting purely private commercial interests in the context of political decisions”. The research was done by Follow the Money, Le Soir and Knack and the police raided 21 addresses in Brussels, Flanders, Wallonia and in Portugal and arrested several people. But while all eyes are on Huawei and China, we at CEO want to highlight a deeper, systemic scandal that was there in Qatargate and is here now: and that is the longstanding failure of the European institutions to properly defend democracy from influence operations. There’s ongoing and systemic failures of lobby monitoring, transparency, and ethics enforcement (including regarding MEP gifts and conflicts of interest). The EU needs to consolidate and speed up implementation of the ethics body to set up common ethical standards across EU institutions.

In this episode, Bram Vranken, campaigner and reseracher at CEO will discuss a report he published in January and which focuses on the standard setting process of the AI act. He uncovered that many of the world’s major tech corporations - among them Huawei - are deeply involved in creating permissive, light-weight standards that risk hollowing out the EU’s AI Act. In short, in it Bram shows that with little to no transparency, private standard-setting organisations are writing rules that have legal status in the EU. Independent experts and civil society are out-numbered, under-funded, and struggling in the face of the corporate dominance.

The EU’s financial system operates in the shadows, with institutions like the European Investment Bank (EIB) wielding immense financial power, but who actually benefits?

In the latest episode of EU Watchdog Radio, we sit down with Yanis Varoufakis - former Greek Finance Minister, Member of the Greek Parliament, and relentless critic of financial elites - to dissect the EU’s economic machinery.

From the European Investment Bank’s role in fueling corporate capture to the EU’s relentless push for competitiveness at the expense of social and environmental justice, we dig into the flaws of a system designed to benefit the few.

In an exchange with Alexandra Gerasimcikova, Varoufakis unpacks the implications of Europe’s lack of political will to mobilise large scale public funds to build a green economy, prospects for Europe to compete with global actors in the field of artificial intelligence, the dangers of Europe’s growing military spending, and what bold changes are needed to shift power back to the people.

Tune in for an unfiltered conversation that exposes the reality behind EU finance.

What does a lipstick, a non-stick frying pan and Scotchgard have in common? They all contain PFAS, a.k.a., forever chemicals!

In this episode, Vicky Cann, campaigner and researcher at CEO, explains how her huge report "Chemical reaction - Inside the corporate fight against the EU’s PFAS restriction" came to be and what were the most shocking results she unveiled.