The News

European Union The talks initiated in 2016 on a compulsory transparency register for interest representatives at European level resumed on 16 June. Whereas the Council of the EU and the European Parliament had previously refused to restrict their meetings solely to lobbyists on the register, the negotiations now seem to be making progress against a more optimistic backdrop….

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and development After the Council of Europe and the Financial Action Task Force, the OECD has also published a policy brief on strengthening public integrity during the Covid-19 crisis. The guidelines assess the main risks associated with the health context (corruption, fraud, price gouging, irregularities in public procurement, etc.) and set out short- and…

European Union Following a tendering process, the European Commission has awarded global asset manager BlackRock the contract for helping it incorporate ESG-related factors into banking supervision. Given that BlackRock is one of the top three investors in the world’s eight largest oil companies and one of the top ten investors in the world’s 12 largest banks, there are…

G20 In their final press release at the G20’s virtual summit on 26 March, and in response to the coronavirus pandemic, the planet’s 20 biggest economies called for solidarity, transparency and cooperation with international institutions to “restore confidence, preserve financial stability and revive growth”. At the same time, the member countries announced their plans to inject more than…

European Union On 3 February, Croatia, which on 1 January succeeded Finland in holding the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, published a list of the companies sponsoring this Croatian presidency. The list includes the INA oil company, owned by the Croatian State and by “the official petrol supplier”, the Hungarian group MOL. There is…

European Union The European Banking Authority (EBA) nominated Ireland’s Gerry Cross as its new Executive Director, but the European Parliament rejected the candidate in committee due to his previous work for the Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME). This decision, which has yet to be confirmed at a plenary session in the coming weeks, has once again…

European Union On Wednesday 18 December, Irishwoman Emily O’Reilly, a European mediator since 2013, was re-elected for a five-year term during a plenary session of the European Parliament held in Strasbourg, with a narrow majority of 320 votes out of 600. It took three rounds before she gained a majority over her main rival Julia Laffranque, an Estonian…

European Union By 461 votes “in favour”, 157 votes “against” and 89 “abstentions”, the von der Leyen Commission received the endorsement of the European Parliament on Wednesday 27 November. The Greens group had not wished to lend it their support, pointing to too many contradictions within the Commission. The Greens maintain in particular that the presence of Thierry…