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You're listening to EU Watchdog Radio.

Welcome to a new episode of EU Watchdog Radio.

My name is Hans Van Schare, media officer at Corporate Europe Observatory, also known as CEO.

And in this new episode of this podcast that reviews EU politics in a critical way,

we dive into the issue of Europe as an economical superpower.

And this is important, because the European Union has and exercises a lot of power around the world.

And even when the European way of doing geopolitics is often described as soft power,

the impact of European businesses in other parts of the world and also in Europe itself is not so soft.

Corporate behaviour, also European ones, often lead to human rights violation and destruction of ecosystems.

This, despite sometimes eye-watering and expensive publicity campaigns by the very same companies.

Think the connections of the meat industry and supermarkets with the destruction in the Amazon forest.

Think people in Bangladesh, risking their lives in unsafe factories for the European textile industry.

Or think farmers in Nigeria who basically lost their farmlands and livelihoods

due to operations of fossil fuel company Shell. And of course, these are just a very few examples.

So what big European corporations and multinationals are contributing to along their global value

chains often is in stark contrast with

the so-called values that European politicians love to brag about in public speeches.

Remember that the EU once won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Of course, the European Integration Project might have merits for intra-European peace.

But looking towards Europe from the other parts of the world, this is much less obvious.

So how is it today? How is the EU dealing with issues like environmental justice, social rights and corporate power?

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