Dentsu affair raises questions about European Commission's relations with tobacco industry

MEPs denounce the lack of transparency of the European Commission regarding the contract signed with Dentsu, the operator in charge of the traceability of tobacco products. Ahead of the publication of a white paper, the European Parliament's working group on tobacco has presented its recommendations for European institutions to change their practices in their relations with representatives of the tobacco industry.

It was during the work on the 10^th Conference of the Parties (COP10) of the fight against tobacco in Panama, and a few days before the 3^th Meeting of the Parties (MOP3) of the Protocol to eliminate illicit trade in tobacco products, that a debate in the European Parliament was devoted to the Dentsu affair on 8 February 2024.

In October 2022, MEP Michèle Rivasi questioned the European Commission on the conditions for awarding the contract for the traceability of tobacco productsThis data processing mission had been entrusted to Dentsu Tracking, a company linked to the tobacco industry. The Commission had belatedly responded that all transparency rules had been respected.

Lack of transparency from the European Commission

During the debate in Parliament on 8 February, several MEPs questioned a representative of the European Commission on the conditions of the contract with Dentsu Tracking.[1].

MEP Anne-Sophie Pelletier pointed out in particular that the choice of this company had initially been made without a call for tender, then renewed in December 2023 under the same conditions. The clauses of this contract remain unknown. The minutes of the meetings with Dentsu, requested by the MEPs, are redacted and incomplete. In addition, the hiring by Dentsu of Jan Hoffman, a former senior European official with DG Health, had reinforced suspicions of a conflict of interest.

Anne-Sophie Pelletier also stressed that the European traceability system is not compliant with the WHO Protocol to Combat Illicit Trade, ratified by the European Union in 2016, which requires that data be processed by an operator independent of the tobacco industry. However, Dentsu is linked to this industry in several ways and would therefore not meet this independence criterion.

The MEP pointed out the role played in this affair by Filip Borkowski, who was Jan Hoffman's superior at DG Santé. In a recent article, Filip Borkowski had indicated that the European traceability system was in line with the WHO Protocol.[2], without being able to demonstrate it. This senior European official has since been transferred to DG CNECT, but his role in the Dentsu case remains to be clarified.[3].

Ylva Johansson, who represented the European Commission in this debate, once again assured that it observed all the rules of transparency and that the European code of ethics protected it from interference by lobbyists. The weight of lobbies, in particular that of the tobacco industry, is nevertheless regularly highlighted by the European Ombudsman, Emily O'Reilly. At the end of December 2023, the latter had once again called on the European Commission to more transparency in its relations with the tobacco industry.

Recommendations of the European Parliament's Tobacco Working Group

It is also in this context that the European Parliament's Working Group on Tobacco announced the publication of a White Paper on Tobacco on 26 February 2024, designed with Smoke Free Partnership and the Alliance Against Tobacco. The seven recommendations of this White Paper were unveiled on 7 February 2024.[4].

Among these, the working group calls for the publication, as early as summer 2024, of proposals for revising the directives on tobacco and its taxation, which have been postponed several times. It calls for the creation of an independent ethics committee, as well as strict compliance with Article 5.3 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which excludes any interaction with the tobacco industry that is not absolutely necessary. It also calls for the introduction of tobacco supply quotas and the termination of existing cooperation agreements with tobacco companies. It wants to ban political financing and corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities by the tobacco industry. Finally, it calls for an investigation into Jan Hoffman's suspected conflict of interest in the Dentsu affair.

Keywords: European Commission, transparency, Dentsu, Jan Hoffman, Filip Borkowski

M.F.

[1] The Dentsu Tracking affair and the European Commission's lack of transparency in its relations with the tobacco industry, European Parliament, Verbatim report of debates, Thursday 8 February 2024.

[2] Borkowski F, Fibbi E, How can tracking and tracing systems give us a look at the dark side of the tobacco market?, Tobacco Control, Published Online First: 23 January 2024. doi: 10.1136/tc-2023-058212

[3] EU's flawed tobacco control agenda exposed ahead of panama-hosted who summits, EU Policies, published 7 February 2024, accessed 12 February 2024.

[4] MEP Tobacco Working Group reveal white paper on occasion of COP10 and MOP3, Eureporter, published on February 7, 2024, accessed on February 9, 2024.