You're listening.

You're listening to EU Watchdog Radio.

Welcome back to EU Watchdog Radio after a long summer break.

My name is Hans Van Scharen, media officer at Corporate Europe Observatory.

The coming months promise to be a hot political season in the European Union and elsewhere.

So stay tuned for getting independent information on how big corporations and their lobbies

are always trying to derail or postpone European policies, policies that serve the general

public interest. And this in many areas, like agricultural reform, more just trade policies,

a sustainable financial sector, robust climate change policies, and of course the proposed Green Deal, according to Ursula

Wunderlein, Europe's Man on the Moon moment. But this week we kick off with an issue that is

unfortunately on everyone's mind every day, the COVID-19 crisis. We'll be discussing specifically the way the European Union is dealing

with the development of vaccines and the lack of transparency which is playing out in favour

of powerful pharmaceutical companies. Unfortunately, this secrecy is feeding the rapidly growing community that is spreading conspiracy theories, as well as the anti-vax movements.

My second guest will be health and medicine expert Janis Natsis from the European Public Health Alliance, IFA, joining us from Greece, and he will be analyzing what is really going on

and what is at stake with the vaccine negotiations. My last guest is Dutch expert

Ellen Hint Hoon, who will explain specifically the European policy and legislation on orphan

medicines introduced 20 years ago, and which to a large extent failed.

But first, I will be discussing with researcher at Corporate Europe Observatory,

Olivier Hudemann, the latest reports by CEO on the lobby power of Big Pharma,

which is spending at least 15 million euro in the Brussels bubble lobbying.

CEO as a lobby watchdog showed on the basis of internal documents how the

Farma lobby has been pushing its commercial interests during the corona pandemic

...