Thursday
1st Dec 2022
Some of Europe's largest pension funds are investing billions of euros in volatile commodity markets, risking the hard-earned income of millions of workers while fuelling a global hunger crisis caused in part by such investments, a new investigation has found.
While Europe is weaning itself off Russian fossil fuels, its nuclear sector is still heavily dependent on Russia, importing over €200m of uranium annually. But when the EU adopts a new sanctions on Friday, nuclear energy will again be absent.
A vast network of European ships helps keep Putin's oil economy afloat. European vessels have shipped millions of tonnes of oil, gas and coal from Russian ports in the six months since the invasion, Investigate Europe and Reporters United reveal.
As European Parliament hearings into hacking scandals resume this week, an investigation led by Lighthouse Reports with EUobserver, Der Spiegel, Domani and Irpimedia reveals the unreported scale of operations at a shady European surveillance outfit.
An IT expert who stirred up anti-EU hatred, an Orientalist, and biological weapons specialists — the profiles of 19 more spies expelled from Belgium in April show what Russia's embassy to the EU was up to.
A lieutenant colonel with top-level Kremlin links, a spy-catcher, and a Big Data specialist - the identities of eight Russians recently expelled by Nato shed light on the espionage threat in Brussels.
Several EU countries have put in place almost permanent internal border controls, circumventing the Schengen Agreement on free movement. The EU Court of Justice declared such controls illegal. Now they are trying to loosen Schengen rules in Brussels negotiations.
A humble "trade representative" from an elite spy unit and a "technician" who did wiretapping — the identities of 21 Russian diplomats kicked out by Belgium help tell the story of how Moscow made Brussels the 'spy capital' of Europe.
MEPs are taking the EU-lead to hold Denmark to account for stripping Syrians of residency rights. Although aware of the problem, the European Commission has other priorities while the issue has not been raised at the Council, representing member states.
The fishmeal industry in recent years has been growing fast in West Africa, in Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal and the Gambia. But that creates problems, with a proliferation of fishmeal factories leading to a "serious overfishing situation."
The EU Commission still withholds the names of its vaccine negotiators, amid protests from MEPs and civil society. Investigate Europe has been able to find several of them.
Three EU-based firms are suspected of trying to smuggle arms to Belarus and Russia via Moldova, in what might be just the tip of a larger black market.
EU proposal to let Big Tech organise algorithms for the public sector is creating a dangerous but invisible injustice.
Most arms deals include "post-sale services", such as training, maintenance and know-how. Often up to 50 percent of the value of a multi-year arms contract is related to post-sale services, which leave companies with an unseen stake in controversial conflicts.
There is a is a clear security threat for the European Parliament that needs to be urgently addressed.
President of the Portuguese Business Confederation, António Saraiva, is at the heart of an apparent conflict of interests.
French defence companies are providing training to Saudis on weapons that France's own military intelligence says puts almost 500,000 people in Yemen at risk. Meanwhile, new evidence has emerged of the French-built Mirage fighter jet being used in Libya.
A prominent Holocaust-denier has made the cover of an EU-funded newsletter, which was published by an avowed German neo-Nazi with a lengthy criminal record. The lack of clear labelling of the MEP behind it violates European Parliament rules.
If you want to make money outside the law, forget guns, drugs, alcohol or cigarettes. Trade in illegal pesticides combines high profits with lower risks.
Internal document shows diplomats questioned whether the secretariat of the Council of the EU was legally allowed to write guidelines on the financing of the six-month rotating EU presidency activities.
Chinese spies have targeted Belgian biological warfare experts, vaccine-maker GSK, and other high-tech firms in the country, Belgium's intelligence service suspects.
As debate around the issue of contact-tracing grows, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reveals that the new science of predicting and monitoring population movements is already here – and EU agencies have been testing it on refugees and migrants.
Former EUobserver investigations editor Peter Teffer has written a new book about how lobbying in the EU works. The EU's focus on the internal market offers corporate lobbyists a perfect means to forward their interests.
The British multinational security company G4S lost its contract with the European Parliament in 2011 in a backlash from MEPs over alleged abuses in Israel. Today, they guard the parliament's main entrance and have become the EU's top security provider.
EUobserver has obtained notification reports from five European states explaining why they want to impose internal border checks. Few provide any substantial evidence to justify the controls, putting the European Commission in a difficult position to end them.
The European Asylum Support Office combed through social media to monitor refugee routes to Europe for three years. The agency sent weekly reports on its findings to member states, the EU Commission and institutions such as UNHCR and Interpol.
EU member states have voted to ban from the market chlorpyrifos, a pesticide which is toxic to the brain in both its forms, and has been the subject of a long-running Le Monde and EUobserver investigation.
A trend has emerged over the past few months where desperate people are paying to get locked up in Libyan detention centres to escape the conflict and with the hope they stand a better chance of getting resettled to Europe.
British PR firm Chelgate worked for the Maltese government on the case of murdered journalist Caruana Galizia, three well-placed sources have told EUobserver.
Citing an EUobserver investigation, MEPs on the consumer protection committee have slammed the EU Commission for allowing Apple to get away with refusing to comply with a common smartphone charger for over a decade.
Questions about family wealth and EU values continue to hang over Croatia's European Commission nominee, Dubravka Suica, ahead of next week's parliamentary hearings.
Insiders at the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), the EU's smallest institution, have described a culture-of-fear environment in the workplace, in the wake of the probationary appointment of its newest secretary-general.
Around 30 members of European Economic Social Committee, who live and work primarily in Brussels or nearby, have claimed €1.47m in a 'daily subsistence' allowance from European taxpayers to cover accommodation, food and local transport for meetings held in Brussels.
