Corporate Europe Observatory
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), is a non-profit research and campaign group targeting threats to democracy, equity, social justice, and the environment by economic powers and political powers of corporations. It is based in Amsterdam and Brussels.[1]
The research team currently consists of Belén Balanyá, Kim Bizzarri, Abel Esteban, Olivier Hoedeman, Nina Holland, Yiorgos Vassalos, Erik Wesselius, Roel van den Bosch and Nami Yamamoto.[1]
[edit] Activities
CEO publishes regular reports and briefing papers on the main corporate lobby groups and their lobbying activities. CEO has hosted several international activist strategy sessions, the most recent of which was conducted in Cordoba, Spain to strengthen the international movement against corporate political power and to challenge the increasing power of industry. The event took place during October of 1999.[2]
In 2005 they registered a complaint with the European Ombudsman, Nikiforos Diamandouros,objecting to the blanking out of lobbyist's names on released EU documents which they claimed blocked transparency in public knowledge of the access and influence corporate lobby groups had over trade policies. The Ombudsman upheld their complaint.[3] The successful complaint was later used in a case heard by the European Court of First Instance brought by a business wishing to know who had been invited to a meeting of stakeholders discussing a possible breach of EU competition law. The court ruled that a full report of the meeting, including the blanked out names, must be released, upholding the ruling of the European Ombudsman in the matter of CEO's complaint.[4]
For the past three years the CEO has also jointly organised the 'Worst EU Lobbying Awards', an award given to the lobby group which uses "the most deceptive, misleading or otherwise problematic lobbying tactics in their attempts to influence EU decision-making" in a given year.[5]
