Saturday
2nd Jul 2022
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.
Despite the responsibility for drafting the EU's artificial intelligence ethics guidelines, few of the expert group members were ethicists. In fact, 26 experts – nearly half of the group's 56 members – represented business interests.
EU proposal to let Big Tech organise algorithms for the public sector is creating a dangerous but invisible injustice.
Why no price-aggregating website for international trains in Europe? Why is it almost impossible to buy a single ticket for a cross-border train? It's easier to go by plane - and governments are making sure it stays that way.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
The French president has repeatedly said an EU border tax on carbon emissions is 'crucial'. However, his civil servants have yet to send Brussels a single proposal on how such a levy would work.
Scientists say there is no acceptable dose to avoid brain damage. Its use is banned in several European countries. Yet its residues are found in fruit baskets, on dinner plates, and in human urine samples from all over Europe.
iPhones and Android products don't use the same charger. This is annoying for consumers and harmful for the environment. Old chargers produce more than 51,000 tons of electronic waste per year.
College of Europe rector Jorg Monar says the surplus money made from setting up closed-door meetings between the Saudi government and EU officials, including MEPs, "would barely cover the replacement costs of a beamer in a College seminar room."
The Bruges-based College of Europe is setting up private meetings with the EU institutions for seven ambassadors plus seven high-level officials from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The European parliament's lead negotiator on the Morocco trade deal, French liberal MEP Patricia Lalonde, is also on the EuroMedA Foundation board along with former Moroccan state ministers and a top ranking official in Morocco's ministry of agriculture.
Companies like the Boston Consulting Group, Google and Uber are pushing the EU to join the race for autonomous (self-driving) cars. But one key question is missing from the debate: should we?
Finland's EU commissioner, Jyrki Katainen told EUobserver in February his cabinet members "always" takes notes when he meets lobbyists. They did not on at least seven occasions, when talking about artificial intelligence.
