100 posts
Lobbyists feeding amendments to MEPs – I’m surprised that this is even news (but we need to know)
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Brussels is lobby-central. Everyone is at it – companies, NGOs, national governments, trade associations – trying to shape legislation that has an impact on 500 million citizens and the market...
A more democratic EU? Stop government secrecy!
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In UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s EU speech this week he talked of the need to increase the EU’s “democratic accountability”. One little known fact is that the most secretive and undemocratic piece of the EU is actually &ls...
Case T‑590/10, Thsesing and Bloomberg v. ECB
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ECB entitled to refuse access to two documents relating to the economic situation in Greece>> On the basis of Decision 2004/258, any EU citizen any natural or legal person residing or having its registered office in a EU Member State, has a rig...
The EU Commission Tries To Silence Data Retention Critic
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Dr. Patrick Breyer is the group leader for the Pirate Party in the regional parliament of Schleswig-Holstein. He is also a juris doctor, who wrote his thesis on the subject of data retention, and one of Germany’s leading experts on the subject.
Acting on Denis MacShane expenses helps the Nazis, claims his friend
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Congratulations to soon-to-be-suspended-from-the-Commons Denis MacShane, who has found someone prepared to defend him in public. Step forward lawyer Mark Stephens, who told Radio 4′s World at One that action taken by Commons authorities over fa...
Seeing Our Way Through The Crisis: Why We Need Fiscal Transparency
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Without good fiscal information, governments can’t understand the fiscal risks they face or make good budget decisions. Fiscal transparency—the public availability of timely, reliable, and relevant data on the past, present, and future state of...
Open Letter to All Anti-Snus Lobbyists
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Last week I and my colleagues in the European Parliament got an email from the lobbyist group Smoke Free Partnership. The lobbyists defended ex-commissioner Dalli who resigned over allegations of soliciting bribes for lifting the ban on snus in the E...
Corruption in China: The Ferrari-Red communists
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China is a country run by a bunch of corrupted authoritarians. Unfortunately, western leaders cowardly choose to turn a blind eye on this reality. That is why why Mitt Romney must be congratulated for his critical stand on the red empire. German...
Will Dalligate mean a delayed Tobacco Products Directive? Don’t Let it Happen!
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We may not be so silly that we give up before the goal! The real issue behind the whole #Dalligate story is not the future position of a single Commissioner or our shaked faith in President Barroso but the failure or success of the revision of the To...
Freedom House partners new Ukrainian anti-corruption blog
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Bloggers against Corruption – That seems fairly straight to the point as far as website titles go. It is the latest civil society platform for bloggers to bring to the attention of others, corruption great and small – be it local, regio...
John Dalli to sue over bribery scandal
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The EU’s former health commissioner has vowed to sue the European Commission in connection with his resignation over an alleged tobacco bribery scandal, escalating a messy dispute between the Maltese politician and his former boss, José Manuel Bar...
aaand one more Dallimerick...
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There once was a man, Silvio, Who said he would lobby, for dough. When asked for his price, He said in a trice,"6,0,0,0,0,0,0,0" See previous efforts here and here. BM.
Another Dallimerick
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After yesterday's effort, here's another few lines on the Dalli affair: There once was a chancer from Malta, Who promised a firm he could alter, A measure impedin' Tobacco from Sweden, Who'd think such an offer could falter? My pleasure. BM...
MEP hides secret finance firm while sitting on Euro monetary committee
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A UKIP MEP is sitting on the European Parliament’s top finance committee without declaring a potentially conflicting interest in a secret company, Political Scrapbook can reveal. UKIP’s Godfrey Bloom, a member the influential Committee on...
How to get rid of Dalli
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Now that Commissioner Dalli suddenly appears to have un-resigned, the question is what to do. As far as I can see, under the Treaties there are two ways to get rid of a Commssioner. On the one hand, there is the approach that President Barroso has ta...
Is art. 247 TFEU redundant?
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Now that Commissioner Dalli suddenly appears to have un-resigned, the question is what to do. As far as I can see, under the Treaties there are two ways to get rid of a Commssioner. On the one hand, there is the approach that President Barroso has ta...
Avgångne snuskommissionären skriver brev till EU-parlamentet
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I tisdags i förra veckan avgick EU-kommissionären John Dalli plötsligt och oväntat, efter att EU’s anti-korruptionsenhet OLAF hade publicerat en rapport om Dallis agerande i samband med det svenska snuset. Enligt OLAF ska Dalli genom ett om...
The structure of EU politics: Story-telling about European Parliament committees
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Trying to make sense of EU politics is quite difficult. Good story-telling is almost impossible because too many people are involved in too many issues. Convincing analysis is hard because the amount of time you have to invest in research is often no...
OLAF & Caesar’s Wife
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I’ll try to to be brief on this one and avoid excessive legalisms. Yesterday, the European Anti-Fraud Office (affectionately known as OLAF) deemed it necessary to issue “a statement in order to clarify comments contained in media reports&...
Why not inform about European Council sources?
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Mandatory weekend reading for grateful EU citizens, who can enjoy the collected wisdom of a sleep-deprived European Council 18 to 19 October 2012 in 23 official EU languages (EUCO 156/12); in English here. In order to offer something fresh at the b...
Dalligate avec du recul – (Part II – Regrets they have a few)
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The day Dalli resigned from the Commission (or was forced to resign if you prefer) I got a call from Malta. “They’ve just mentioned his resignation on RTK. Is he preparing for the election too?” You couldn’t fault this way of...
Dalligate avec du recul (Intermezzo – European Update)
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What was the nickname that Labour had for (then) Minister Dalli a while back? Johnny Cash no? This was back in the time when Dalli was a successful nationalist party heavyweight who imported the much maligned Value Added Tax and bulldozed budget af...
Mystiken tätnar i EU’s snus-skandal
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Nu kommer det nya ganska sensationella uppgifter i skandalen runt EU-kommissionären John Dalli och det svenska snuset. Dalli avgick plötsligt och oväntat i tisdags, efter anklagelser om att han genom ombud ska ha försökt kräva Swedish Match på...
BM caption competition update - Dalli & Barroso
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Further to the caption competition flagged up yesterday, here's one... Ho ho. BM...
Unfair dismissal without the dismissal. Nor, technically, the unfair.
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Dalli may claim his rights of defence were breached, while Barroso's lawyers could argue the toss over whether those rights applied. It's potentially a political ousting that wouldn't be out of place in an episode of The Thick Of It. YOU'RE RESIGN...
In other news…
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A member of your country’s senior government resigned this week, amid charges of improper lobbying: you probably read about it. Or maybe you didn’t, because that individual was John Dalli, European Commissioner for Food. Indeed, if you di...
Could Dalli’s case threaten the European Commission?
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Unlikely. The Health Commissioner John Dalli resigned or it seems he was forced to resign over alleged corruption. Question: Would you say that this resignation because of the alleged corruption may have the lasting negative impact on the European...
EU, snuset och demokratin
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När det talas om korruption i EU, då ser man framför sig hur företag och särintressen försöker smussla till politiker och byråkrater bruna papperspåsar med kontanter. I gengäld väntar de sig att lagar och regler anpassas till deras önskem...
Put that in yer pipe...
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Calabash-for-influence? Amid the blah de blah over EU health commissioner John Dalli's resignation and a cash-for-influence probe over tobacco legislation, has no-one thought to look further into the links between the European Commission and Bi...
GAC preparation for European Council 18-19 October 2012
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In customary manner, the preparatory and coordinating General Affairs Council (GAC) 16 October 2012 was practically useless for informed debate about the upcoming European Council. See item Preparation of the October European Council (page 9) to mak...
OLAF investigation brings down Health Commissioner Dalli
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An OLAF investigation into attempts by the tobacco industry to influence EU legislation has led to the resignation of Maltese Commissioner John Dalli, who had health as his portfolio.The investigation was into whether a Maltese entrepreneur had used...
European Commissioner John Dalli resigns
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European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy, John Dalli, has resigned with immediate effect in the wake of an investigation by the European Union's anti-fraud office OLAF...
EU-kommissionär får avgå efter mutskandal om snus
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EU-komissionären John Dalli, som är ansvarig för konsumentfrågor, avgår efter bedrägerianklagelser, rapporterar Svd. Tydligen ska han ha låtit Swedish Match förstå att han kunde göra snus tillåtet i hela EU om han fick en muta för besvär...
EU Secrets
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As part of her ongoing fight over the EU’s agreement with the US over the exchange SWIFT data, MEP Sophie in ‘t Veld is trying to get her hands on the full version of this Europol inspection report. The problem is that it is classified UE...
Commission's Refusal to Block Revolving Door triggers Ombudsman Complaint
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Corporate Europe Observatory, alongside Greenpeace, Lobbycontrol and Spinwatch, have submitted a complaint about the Commission's repeated refusal to take the revolving door problem seriously. The 'revolving door' describes the movement of staff f...
Transparency in medical research data. 13-11-12 in European Parliament
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Transparency in medical research data and protecting public health Opening up EU clinical trial data for safe and effective medicines The European Parliament is presently considering the Clinical Trials Regulation. http://ec.europa.eu/health/human-us...
The Berlaymont Papers: That’s Key Commission Thinking?
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“BEPA has developed the concept of the ‘Berlaymont Papers‘ which will make available to a wider public some of the key thinking going on within the service. The first issue of the ‘Berlaymont Papers’, building on the W...
On PM Borissov’s alleged murky past
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My friends in Twitter asked me to explain an article they found on the web and could not fully understand. I’m happy to provide some insight. The European Parliament CRIM committee has held on Monday evening a meeting ‘in camera’ to examine a r...
Financial Times joins chorus for more transparency at the ECB
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We at TI-EU have been questioning the levels of transparency and accountability at the ECB, as you can see in our op-ed in the EU Observer and our blog post on President Barroso’s address . We are glad to see that those wise old heads at the...
EC proposal to increase transparency
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The Commission has adopted a proposal designed to apply new rules with regard to the publication of information on the beneficiaries of European agricultural funds. This legislative review has been prompted by a 2010 judgment of the Court of Justice...
'Key moment' in drive for transparency hailed by MEP
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A European Parliament vote in favour of new rules on disclosure for large companies in the extractive industries – together with a similar law in the US – marks progress towards strong global transparency standards, says Arlene McCarthy...
Old stories, new stories: Fight for EU transparency and for EU documents
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I haven’t been blogging much over here lately, because of my new job at the EU Office of Transparency International in which my digital attention is currently focused on this website and contributions to this Twitter account. Still, this wou...
What was discussed during Commissioner Rehn's meetings with Goldman Sachs? Euro Commissioner has a transparency problem.
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Since the start of the eurocrisis, the European Commission has gained significant new powers to monitor and intervene in government budgets at a member-state level in the name of ‘economic governance’. At the same time, as a member of the Troika...
Another case of alleged corruption in a CEE energy company
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Alleged corruption at Poland’s second biggest state-owned energy company ENEA S.A. may compromise yet another project financed by European public banks. We have seen a number of cases recently, where clients of the European Investment Bank and the...
MEPs help to make the EU 0.0014286% more transparent
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Compared to the EU’s 2011 budget of around 140 billion Euros, 2 million Euros (that’s 0.0014286% of 140 billion Euros) doesn’t sound like much. However, a fight – which is expected to come to a head this week – between the European Parlia...
