Investigate Europe is a journalist collective running cross-border investigations on tax avoidance, Big Tech, pharma pricing, and housing.
HN links it as supporting evidence in threads on European housing, energy, and corporate tax practices, with no commenter judgment of its quality.
Chemical industry used big tobacco’s tactics to conceal evidence of PFAS risks
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/07/pfas-3m-dupont-chemical-industry-health-toxic-study
Companies Knew the Dangers of PFAS 'Forever Chemicals'—and Kept Them Secret
https://time.com/6284266/pfas-forever-chemicals-manufacturers-kept-secret/
WHO's Proposed Limits on PFAS in Drinking Water Far Too Weak: Experts
https://www.commondreams.org/news/who-pfas-drinking-water-proposal
Europe’s circular economy is leaking
https://www.investigate-europe.eu/en/2023/europes-circular-economy-is-leaking/
Rightwing war on ‘woke capitalism’ partly driven by fossil fuel interests and allies
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/22/rightwing-war-on-woke-capitalism-industry-interests
How Big Oil is manipulating the way you think about climate change
https://www.salon.com/2023/05/13/how-big-oil-is-manipulating-the-way-you-think-about-climate-change/
Even Greenpeace now admits the obvious: recycling doesn’t work
https://www.city-journal.org/article/on-second-thought-just-throw-plastic-away
How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled
Outside the Safe Operating Space of a New Planetary Boundary for Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS)
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.2c02765
Documenting the Hidden History of Chemical and Pesticide Hazards in…
See France and its maintenance issues with not just one but many of their power plants, accumulated over decades and now greatly contributing to the European energy problems. (https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/10/13/frances-nuclear-reactors-will-not-work-as-normal-any-time-soon)
Some issues I see are accountants, management, laziness, "somebody else's problem", etc. Those are businesses and they will try all the well-known ways to save money. Which the politicians will also encourage, because nuclear power will need to be justified continuously (like all other forms).
There also are water issues, not just river temperature (France, this summer), we also had a lot of European rivers with barely enough or not enough for most of the normal uses of those rivers this summer - and predictions are we'll have more such extremes. So, ensuring water supplies will be adequate at all times will become harder too, and much more expensive.
Not to mention that Russia - Rosatom - will again play a big role in Western European energy when it comes to nuclear. (https://www.investigate-europe.eu/en/2022/russias-multi-million-euro-nuclear-exports-untouched-by-eu-sanctions/)
Air plane and human space flight accidents are extremely rare but they still occur despite all the rules and regulations and the training and the many levels of precautions, but nuclear has to be even better.
> Europe would _love_ to have it's own natural gas source right about now.
And yet... the Netherlands closed down the Groningen gas field because the green voters wanted it and because they showed a few slightly cracked walls on a few houses on TV and claimed it was because of the gas field (and not because of shoddy foundations and poor construction).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groningen_gas_field
We also could have been doing fracking on land. Maybe in the future?
https://www.investigate-europe.eu/posts/europes-energy-crisis-is-reviving-the-fracking-industry
(2.9 on the Richter scale isn't much.)
And the biggest Danish gas field in the North Sea is still down due to the old off-shore facilities being scrapped and new ones being built. This is done by TotalEnergies and should have been completed more than a year ago. It was delayed by Covid-19 but should then have been completed by summer this year. It is still not complete :(
High expectations from TotalEnergies: https://totalenergies.com/projects/gas/tyra-major-offshore-project-core-our-climate-strategy
Danish realities: https://energinet.dk/gas/forsyningssikkerhed/tyra/
The last platform was only put in place in October 2022 (and there was still lots of work to do): https://energiwatch.dk/Energinyt/Olie___Gas/article14460490.ece
All kinds of money:
"Anyone who’s lived in London as long as I have can’t fail to notice that over the last 30 years, the city’s become awash with money. From the mid-90s onwards (the last time property was affordable to anyone on an average salary) shops have got more designer, cars faster, and property commands ever more eye-watering sums. Knightsbridge and Belgravia have become the playground of oligarchs and at the centre of it all — that temple to Mammon — stands Canary Wharf, home to banks, insurance companies and lawyers, gleaming on the London skyline, its shiny windows hiding shady deals.
‘Londongrad’, ‘Moscow-on-Thames’… That Russian money has been given a warm welcome in London is no secret. Over the last two decades, swathes of prime real estate in London and its surroundings have been bought by wealthy Russians looking for a safe haven for their cash, with few or no questions asked. "
https://www.investigate-europe.eu/opinion/londongrad-a-citys-addiction-to-russian-oligarchs-and-easy-money
It has been proven that west european products made by west european companies sold in east europe are of low quality and sometimes even more expensive:
https://www.investigate-europe.eu/en/2021/dual-quality-food-europe/
Claims east europeans “displaced jobs” from west europe yet east europeans have been forced to migrate to western europe due to a lack of jobs. How have jobs been moved to east europe when people leave precisely because there are no jobs?
They also claim that east europe was meant to provide “cheap labour” for richer nations in the eu - basically admitting the plan has always been to keep those people poor so they can work in factories. Somehow they should be thankful for that.
The list continues and is a good indication of the underlying issues that plague european “solidarity”.
What was initially sold as a continuation of the marshal plan has taken a very dark european shape where if you dont like it you are told to get out.
This is called transfer pricing. VW can make cars in the US, but barely make any profit, thus minimizing taxes paid to the US. The subscription payments however can flow freely to the Switzerland directly, where royalty payments are taxed at the lowest possible rate.
This is how pharma works: pharma entities in the US dont make any profit, because they send royalty to the IP holder entity in Switzerland, where these royalty payments are taxes at the lowest rate possible and profits are sheltered that way from the US and EU taxation
https://www.investigate-europe.eu/posts/deadly-prices-pharma-firms-stash-profits-in-europes-tax-havens-as-patients-struggle-with-drug-prices