ALTER EU Conference

On 9-10 October ALTER-EU organized a conference on “Ending corporate privileges and lobbying secrecy in the EU: Challenges & strategies for future campaigning” in conjunction with it’s annual Assembly. The event comprised of:

• A two-day conference (9th – 10th October) on the challenges and strategies necessary to curb the excessive influence of corporate lobbying on decision-making in Europe (as defined in the ALTER-EU founding statement – see www.alter-eu.org);

• The ALTER-EU Annual Assembly (10th October);
  On 8th October ALTER-EU also held an action outside the European Parliament (EP) in occasion of the public hearing on the European Transparency Initiative (ETI) and the EP’s own initiative to regulate lobbying.

Whatch a short short video of the action cas well as of the conference.

Over the last two years, ALTER-EU has campaigned intensively and with some impact to influence the European Transparency Initiative (ETI), in particular the question of transparency around (corporate) lobbying and, more generally, on the need to address the excessive influence of corporate lobbyists in setting the political agenda in Europe.
The conference brought together over 70 campaigners, trade unionists, academics, researchers and writers from over 20 countries to discuss and strategise about the challenges ahead: What are the problems caused by ever-growing levels of corporate influence over decision-making in Europe?; What should the next steps be in ALTER-EU campaigning in order to effectively tackle these challenges in a post-ETI context?

As well as featuring inspiring speakers in plenary sessions, the conference allowed for participants to gather and debate in more detail specific issues during workshop sessions with informal meetings taking place in parallel to strategise campaigning activities at national level. The conference was held in English with translation into French.

The confrence proceedings can be downloaded from the documents listed on the top right of this page. For a summary of the Assembly and the proposed campaigning ideas and strategies for ALTER-EU in 2008, please contact kim@corporateeurope.org