Nationalising companies is no longer a taboo topic for the European Union's state members. After the 1990s and the beginning of the 21st-century privatisations, the economic crisis of 2008 gave a central role back to State ownership. The COVID-19 outbreak has opened the leading European companies' doors to the public capital.
In Europe, the period 2020-2021 was to mark the turning point in the fight against plastic waste, one of the most urgent problems of our century. Then came the new Coronavirus: with masks, gloves, and anti-contagion packaging, the risk of a step back is increasingly concrete
Regulation of the European Parliament is highly voluntary. Compared to 90 percent of Swedish, Danish or Finnish MEPs who disclose meetings with interest groups, only one out of ten Greek, Polish and Bulgarian MEPs do so.
Meetings with dozens of assistants and thousands of civil servants fly under the radar of the EU's transparency register. The heads of the pharmaceutical industry, EFPIA is one of the most active lobby groups. In less than a year and a half since the start of the pandemic they have held as many meetings with senior Commission officials as in the last five years.
In this conversation, Ornaldo Gjergji (OBC Transeuropa), Martina Zaghi (Openpolis), and David Cabo (CIVIO) discuss the relations between public administrations and newsrooms, from data accessibility to transparency. And on how the COVID-19 pandemic may (or may not) have changed the state of play.
Exploring and improving the Aleph stack for journalistic open source research of public documents, regardless of their format or language. A post by Datactivist
In the second episode of EDJNet's Data Literacy podcast, Lorenzo Ferrari (OBC Transeuropa), Clara Guibourg (J++), and Alexander Damiano Ricci (VoxEurop) discuss what makes transnational data journalism special, from the variety of data sources to multilingualism. As well as the need for reasoned comparisons among countries, and the increasing relevance of local contexts.
As the EU sets its sights on harmonising taxation of the rising e-cigarette and heated tobacco products market, lobbyists fight to keep prices down and smokers hooked. The forthcoming negotiations are intertwined with the bitter competition between the two industry giants.
According to the annual assessment of the European Railway Agency, the trend of a steady decrease in the number of rail accidents continues. However, rail-related suicide rates remain roughly the same.
The various COVID-19 related lockdowns and closures of the EU’s borders have reduced mobility, particularly of migrants. First-time asylum applications fell by 37 percent between 2019 and November 2020.
