EU Watchdog Radio

In this new episode of EU Watchdog Radio, we start with a Bang. This podcast deals with the question how the big digital corporations and platforms like Facebook, Google, Amazon and others try to influence European policy making to keep their business models intact. New research by CEO and the colleagues from the German association LobbyControl, shows the incredible lobby firepower of Big Tech. Th...

In this special summer episode we’ll bring you the true story on how the European Union has been dealing with the covid-19 pandemic so far and why the EU seems to have a deep love affair with Big Pharma. In two parts of this podcast several experts will explain that the European Commission – the executive branch of the EU - not only has a very eurocentric way of dealing with the pandemic, but also...

In the second part of this episode we first talk with Dimitri Eynikel, expert of Doctors without Borders who explains why the proposals of the EU to counter or derail the proposal of South-Africa and India, are rather meaningless. Dimitri explains why the proposals of the EU to boost global production and access to vaccines and therapeutics will simply not work and might even take us backwards. An...

In this new episode of this podcast we put spotlights on the European Union as an economical superpower and how the EU regulates - or not - corporate power. The European way of doing (geo)politics is often described as ‘soft power’. But the impact of European businesses in other parts of the world – as well as in the EU itself - is often not so soft; As corporate behaviour often leads to human rig...

In this new episode of EU Watchdog Radio we dive into the issue of plains, trains, cars and bicycles aka transport and why this is such a powerful issue in the context of climate change and healthy societies. Since the lockdown many plains stayed on the ground, which from a climate perspective is a good thing. The pandemic learned us that we need to change certain ways in which we live, travel and...

In this new episode of EU Watchdog Radio we dive into the covert lobby tactics used by the biotechnology industry to get a new generation of GMO’s to be used in agriculture, deregulated in the EU. Why are agrochemical companies like Bayer and Corteva so against having European safety rules? And why is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation financing this lobby-campaign? A few decades ago some agroc...

This new episode of EU Watchdog Radio is dedicated to the Global Climate strike on Friday the 19th of March; Two experts talk about how the current proposed climate policies are too much oriented towards market based solutions and influenced by the same industry that created climate change: the fossil fuel companies. In the year 2021, we have started the last decade we have to take urgent climate...

In this new episode of EU Watchdog Radio we dive into one of the biggest examples of ‘cognitive dissonance’ in recent history. Every (European) policymaker knows by now that fossil fuels should stay in the ground, but yet they keep defending the EU’s membership of a treaty that defends fossil fuel investments: the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT).We’ll be talking with Pia Eberhardt , campaigner and exp...

In this new episode we dive into the incredible story on how Fortress Europe is being constructed by a European agency called the ‘European Border and Coast Guard Agency’ AKA Frontex, almost in the dark and without any democratic oversight. With billions of EU taxpayer’s money and the help of dozens of lobbyists from defense, arms and surveillance technology industries, Frontex is creating a world...

Pandemic, austerity, privatisation and the urgency of an honest debate on health care policy. In this first new episode of 2021, we dive into the topic that is unfortunately still on everyone's mind each and every day: the raging pandemic. Our main focus is why were /are health care systems in many countries under such pressure when dealing with Covid-19? From hospitals to care homes, the outsourc...

Listen to CEO-researcher Belen Balanya who published a report on the 'Hydrogen Hype' and why this trojan horse of the gas industry is not a climate solution, making the EU Green Deal a grey deal.

‘Black rocking the European Green Deal’ is the title of this fourteenth episode, in which CEO researcher Kenneth Haar and Jana Leutner researcher at Change Finance, discuss the Blackrock scandal. Together they published a report called “The BlackRock Model”, in which they uncover the scale of the blunder of the European Commission by granting a contract to BlackRock to give advice on ‘sustainable...

In this new EU Watchdog Radio episode, Xavier Sol, director at Counter Balance discusses the role of the European Investment Bank (EIB) outside of Europe and the bank’s intention to become the ‘EU Development Bank’.A new report published by Counter Balance and CEE Bankwatch Network however shows that the Bank is not yet fit for the task. The report titled 'Can the EIB become the 'EU Development Ba...

In this new EU Watchdog episode CEO-researcher Nina Holland explains why and how it is possible that the European Parliament and ministers of Agriculture decided this week - under influence of the powerful agrochemical lobby to go for the destructive status quo on European agriculture. Nina Holland, researcher at CEO, main author of a very recent CEO-report on the Agrochemical lobby explains how a...

In this new episode, after a long summer break we dive into the topic that is unfortunately still on everyone's mind each and every day: the raging pandemic. Our main question: when will there be a vaccine? The second question: who controls the development of those vaccines? And who protects the general interest or public health against the problematic,profit-maximising business-models rampant in...

In this tenth episode, German investigative reporter Harald Schumann describes how and why many EU member states seem to still have a crush on fossil fuels. Despite the overwhelming knowledge and practical evidence of the effects of climate change, governments keep subsidizing the use of fossil fuels. Schumann and his colleagues from the pan-European journalistic platform Investigate Europe just p...

In this ninth episode, Belén Balanyá and Lala Hakuma Dadci both researcher and campaigner at Corporate Europe Observatory, take a step back and have a critical look at what is currently happening with the EU flagship project the EU Green Deal (EGD).The EGD could be one of the most important and hopeful EU policy initiatives. It is testimony to civil society and citizens movement's impact. Excludin...

In this eighth episode, Clara Bourgin, research and policy assistant at Counter Balance digs into the recent commitments taken by the Europe Investment Bank (EIB) – the lending arm of the European Union - to become the “EU Climate Bank”.Back in November 2019, the EIB took the groundbreaking decision to phase out its support to fossil fuels and to align all its operations with the objectives of the...

In this seventh episode Vicky Cann, researcher and campaigner at Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) and Nina Katzemich EU Campaigner at LobbyControl dig into so called the green credentials of the German government. They explain how the German Government’s ‘love affair’ with gas and the unconditional support for its automobile sector are two clear cut examples of how its EU Presidency risks preven...

EU Watchdog Radio is a new podcast hosted jointly by Corporate EuropeObservatory (CEO) and Counter Balance. In the sixth episode MartinPigeon, researcher and campaigner at CEO and Marine Ejuryan, Advocacymanager at ‘Global Health Advocates’ (GHA) explain the content of twoin-depth and damning reports they just published; These reports areabout how, in the name of innovation, industrial lobbies hav...

EU Watchdog Radio is a new podcast hosted jointly by Counter Balance and CEO. In the fifth episode, we talk with two experts from civil society organisations about the role of big financial institutions or companies in the economic recovery and Green Deal. Red line: there is enough money to finance climate proof and socially just change, but we need more scrutiny of how and where that money is bei...

EU Watchdog Radio is a new podcast hosted jointly by Counter Balance and CEO. In the fourth episode, we talk with five experts from civil society organisations about the Covid-19 crisis. The virus as an X-ray: it brings various societal problems that already existed to light. Laura Ulman from Greenpeace, Olivier Hoedeman and Margarida Silva from CEO, Xavier Sol from Counter Balance and Tove Maria...

In the third episode of EU Watchdog Radio Nicholas Hildyard, UK based researcher and activist of the NGO, The Corner House, gives some fascinating insights in the world of logistics. A world that we all benefit from, but know very little about. Hildyard, who just published a new report with Counter Balance, states that we are all being 'logisticized' without even realizing it. The relatively new e...

In this second episode Nina Holland and Kenneth Haar, both researchers from the Brussels-based lobby watchdog Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), analyze the ongoing negotiations on a EU-US trade deal and what impact this ‘TTIP-light’ could have on the so called European Green Deal. This Green Deal is the alpha and omega of the new European Commission under president Ursula von der Leyen, that pro...

EU Watchdog Radio is a new podcast hosted jointly by two Brussels based organisations Counter Balance (CB) and Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO).In the very first episode Xavier Sol of Counter Balance discusses how the European Union is planning to finance the Green Deal and the role played by the transformation of the European Investment Bank (EIB) into the so-called ‘EU Climate Bank’. Is this r...