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In a milestone win for civil society, the EU will withdraw from the climate-wrecking Energy Charter Treaty (or ECT). The ECT was designed in the 1990s to favour industry’s interests, and was a powerful weapon to obstruct the kind of phaseout of fossil fuels needed to avoid catastrophic climate change. It should never have existed in the first place.In this episode of EU Watchdog Radio, Joana Louçã talks to Pia Eberhardt, former campaigner and researcher at CEO, and Lucía Bárcena, Project Coor...

For the first time in seventeen years, the European Gas Conference was cancelled—or, at least, postponed. However, this did not stop CEO from travelling all the way to Vienna to meet with climate activists and campaigners at the People’s Summit, the counter-summit of the Gas Conference.This episode was recorded live in the capital city of Austria. Marcella Via spoke with CEO’s researchers and campaigners Pascoe Sabido and Belén Balayá about their views on the People’s Summit and the relevance...

Amazon is a frequent visitor to the EU Parliament. In January alone, it had nine meetings with MEPs. But when it refused to appear before the Employment Committee on a hearing on crucial issues concerning working conditions within its warehouses, it made MEPs from all party groups extremelly angry, and rightly so. On 5 February, MEPs on the European Parliament’s Employment Committee sent an official letter to Roberta Metsola, the European Parliament President, urging the withdrawal of lo...

Another year, another COP. As the UN climate talks concluded in Dubai, for the first time ever a “transition away from fossil fuels” has been mentioned in the final text, but calling for a win would be a clear overstatement. The text has the oily fingerprints of the fossil fuel lobby all over it. The reality is COP28 is more likely to facilitate a fossil fuel frenzy by cementing false solutions in the text: exactly what the army of lobbyists ordered.Listen to our new podcast episode of EU Wat...

It's one year since the Qatargate corruption scandal exploded across the EU institutions and a good time to review if and how things have changed in the Brussels Bubble. In this episode, Joana Louçã talks to Corporate Europe Observatory's researchers Olivier Hoedeman and Vicky Cann.WHO WE AREThis podcast is produced by CEO and Counter Balance. Both NGOs raise awareness on the importance of good governance in the EU by researching issues like lobbying of large and powerful industries, corporat...

As the European Commission’s current mandate draws to a close, some Commissioner’s are contemplating their next moves. One such politician is current Vice President Margrethe Vestager, who is campaigning to become the next president of the European Investment Bank (EIB). She is one of five potential candidates who will take over from current EIB president Werner Hoyer at the end of this year, with the successor to be chosen in the coming months.The EIB is the largest multilateral development ...