European Ombudsman sounds alarm over tobacco lobby's influence on Commission

The European Ombudsman, Emily O'Reilly, has warned of the risks linked to the influence of the tobacco lobby on the European Commission. In an op-ed published Thursday 4 April on the Social Europe website[1], she is concerned about unrecorded meetings and insufficient or absent minutes of meetings between certain Commission departments and representatives of the tobacco industry.

Emily O'Reilly points out that governments should limit any interaction with the tobacco industry to what is strictly necessary to ensure effective regulation. She refers to Article 5.3 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, ratified by the EU in June 2005.

European Commission still too susceptible to tobacco industry lobby

Emily O'Reilly has twice since 2016 reviewed the Commission's efforts to ensure that interactions with the tobacco industry are transparent and consistent with its commitments under the FCTC. In her first investigation, in 2016, she commended the Commission's health department for proactively making public the existence and records of all its interactions with the industry, regardless of the seniority of the staff involved.

Unfortunately, the Commission has refused to apply these obligations at all levels, meaning that all its other departments and services have systematically documented only meetings involving the most senior officials. Key staff, such as policy officers, who are usually responsible for preparing and drafting texts, were not required to document meetings with tobacco industry representatives. Given that decision-makers rely on the expertise and input of those who work for them, it does not appear acceptable for the Commission to consider that meetings between such staff and tobacco industry lobbyists are not covered by its transparency commitments.

Since then, the Commission's Taxation and Customs Department has also implemented a proactive transparency policy for all staff interactions with tobacco lobbyists. This is a positive development, but the latest investigation into the matter, which ended at the end of 2023, showed that the Commission continued to refuse to apply these required transparency standards to all staff, regardless of the service concerned. This is despite the fact that other services, including Trade, Internal Market, Environment and Transport, as well as the European Anti-Fraud Office, have held meetings with tobacco lobbyists in recent years.

The Ombudsman's investigation also found that there do not appear to be minutes of a number of recent meetings with tobacco lobbyists. And for some meetings where minutes were taken, some do not provide a meaningful record of what was discussed, other than a brief summary of the general topic and statements made by Commission staff. She also adds that the Commission has no specific procedures or rules for determining whether individual meetings with tobacco industry representatives are necessary. Such rules should be developed and applied consistently across all Commission departments and services.

White paper from the European Parliament's Tobacco Working Group to be available soon

A group of MEPs led by Michèle Rivasi (Greens/EFA), Anne-Sophie Pelletier (The Left) and Pierre Larrouturou (S&D) met between 2021 and 2023, with the participation of public health associations Smoke-Free Partnership (SFP), the Alliance Against Tobacco (ACT), the Tobacco Control Research Group (TCRG) of the University of Bath, the Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), and independent experts to study the parallel tobacco trade, the case Dentsu Tracking/Jan Hoffmann, lobbying by cigarette manufacturers and their subsidiaries, and the environmental damage caused by tobacco.

The synthesis of this work took the form of a White Paper which will be presented on April 11, 2024.[2]. For MEP Anne-Sophie Pelletier, the observation is clear: this work demonstrates how the European Commission opens its doors too easily to the tobacco lobby, showing itself to be particularly receptive to the industry's demands. The white paper will be distributed in French and English to the 27 Member States, the Commission, political groups, current and future MEPs, NGOs and the media with the aim of quickly achieving a tobacco-free generation in the EU.

The EU has set itself the goal of achieving a tobacco-free generation in the coming years. This requires the adoption of new effective measures to combat smoking. However, for several years, the European Parliament and the Member States have been waiting for the Commission to publish the draft revision of the 2011 taxation of tobacco products. Similarly, the process of revising the 2014 directive on tobacco products is significantly behind schedule.

Keywords: European Union, Commission, lobby, interference, TPD, tobacco industry, influence, Emily O'Reilly

©Generation Without Tobacco

AE

[1] Emily O'Reilly, Protecting EU health policy from tobacco lobbying, Social Europe, published on April 4, 2024

[2] Graham Paul, After "QATARGATE" at the Parliament, "TOBACCOGATE" at the Commission?, Euroreporter, published on April 4, 2024