EU watchdog warns Commission on tobacco lobbying

Ombudsman says ‘public health’ concerns demand higher transparency standard.

The EU’s public watchdog strongly criticized the European Commission Monday for not allowing more public scrutiny of its interactions with tobacco lobbyists.

European Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly has been pushing the Commission to disclose the minutes of meetings its officials have with tobacco industry representatives, but the EU’s executive body has said its transparency regulations are already sufficient.

“This is a missed opportunity by the Juncker Commission to show global leadership in the vital area of tobacco lobbying,” O’Reilly said in a statement.

The ombudsman, who investigates complaints about the functioning of the EU institutions but has no formal power to take action against them, is currently looking into whether the Commission respects its transparency obligations under the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which the EU adopted last year.

According to the ombudsman, the rules of the convention require signatories to limit meetings with the tobacco industry and to ensure transparency when those meetings occur. The investigation was launched after a complaint from Corporate Europe Observatory, a lobbying transparency NGO.

The ombudsman said the Commission’s health and food safety department was disclosing its interactions with the tobacco industry but that other departments were falling short.

The Commission, in an official reply to the ombudsman, said that the “differences in practice” in how various departments disclosed the interactions “are fully justified,” adding that it is not unusual for its services to have different rules for meeting the industry.

O’Reilly said that the same rules should apply to “all branches of government” and not only to public health officials.

“It cannot be enough to adopt a restrictive view of what is expected from the U.N. FCTC or to justify lack of proactivity on the grounds that it has met the minimum legal requirements,” she wrote. “Public health demands the highest standard.”

She also warned that the Commission’s refusal to tighten the rules “effectively means that future meetings of Commission officials with tobacco lobbyists may create distrust. It appears that the sophistication of global lobbying efforts by big tobacco continues to be underestimated.”

The Commission is currently considering whether to renew agreements with tobacco companies to fight cigarette smuggling. Those agreements, between the four biggest tobacco companies and the EU anti-fraud office (known by its French acronym OLAF), are often criticized for a lack of transparency, especially regarding meetings between tobacco companies and Commission civil servants.

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