Since June 2024, tobacco lobbyists have already had 220 meetings with MEPs. In particular, the revision of the Tobacco Excise Directive is now under discussion. The lobby is trying to get exceptions to the regulations for alternative nicotine products. Health organizations do little in return.

By the web editors

Two MEPs from the extreme-right Party for Freedom (PVV) are the only Dutch people in the European Parliament (EP) who have met with tobacco lobbyists since June 2024. Auke Zijlstra had five meetings and Ton Diepeveen three, including a working visit to the Philip Morris International factory in Bergen op Zoom on June 27 of this year.

Zijlstra spoke with PMI three times, once together with the lobby agency EUTOP Europe, which has British American Tobacco (BAT) as a client. That agency also knocked on Zijlstra’s door separately, who also had a meeting with Japan Tobacco International (JTI). In all those meetings, the current revision of the Tobacco Excise Directive was the topic of discussion. Diepeveen had introductory meetings with PMI and JTI at the beginning of this year and visited PMI in Bergen op Zoom in June.

These data can be obtained from the overview of meetings between MEPs and lobbyists from the tobacco industry, which TabakNee keeps in a separate dossier. It is clear that lobbying towards European parliamentarians has recently been stepped up, now that the European Commission (EC) published its proposal for the revision of the Tobacco Excise Directive (TED) in July. The revision of the Tobacco Products Directive is also scheduled for this parliamentary term.

Already 220 encounters

As of June 2024, 220 meetings between tobacco lobbyists and MEPs have already been registered in the European Parliament’s Transparency Register. In the 30 conversations since the publication of the EC’s TED revision proposal, the excise duty directive has almost always been the topic. The tobacco lobby is trying to find an ear in the EP for the ‘harm reduction’ narrative, with which it hopes to achieve exceptions to the regulations for alternative, ‘smoke-free’ nicotine products such as e-cigarettes, heated tobacco and nicotine pouches. The Commission wants to tax these products in a similar way to traditional tobacco. The tobacco industry argues that this removes the incentive for smokers to switch to a ‘less harmful’ alternative.

Lobby through the media

That story about harm reduction is now also being voiced more and more loudly in paid opinion pieces in media aimed at the European political arena, including EU Reporter, The Parliament and Euractiv. The latest example is a piece in The Brussels Times sponsored by the Tholos Foundation, an American foundation originating from Americans for Tax Reform that propagates free trade. The piece contains all the arguments that the tobacco industry keeps putting forward to cast doubt on the true nature of nicotine products, because in fact they are all addictive and harmful to health in one form or another. And in all cases, the industry’s strategy remains to seduce young people into such addiction as early as possible.

160 PMI lobbyists

In the run-up to the first revision of the Tobacco Products Directive in 2014, Philip Morris International alone appeared to have deployed an army of 160 lobbyists to weaken the proposed measures. Leaked internal documents, described at the time in our series The Philip Morris Files, showed, among other things, that PMI had systematically mapped out how all MEPs stood on the tobacco dossier and to what extent they could be influenced. There is no reason to think that it would be different now. In any case, PMI is by far the most active in the EP with 96 of the 220 meetings. BAT is well behind with 46 meetings and JTI went for interviews 16 times.

European People’s Party most visited

The number of meetings per political group in the EP shows that the industry is mainly targeting the European People’s Party (EPP). 73 of the 220 meetings were with members of this group, which is also the largest group with 188 of the 720 seats. But the EPP also plays a key role in this dossier because the group can change the vote one way or another, so for or against more far-reaching measures to reduce nicotine use.

The lobby is also mainly looking for the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR, 78 seats) with 49 meetings, and the right-wing radical Patriots for Europe (84 seats) with 38 meetings. Lobbyists are less heard by the Socialists and Democrats (S&D, 136 seats), where 28 conversations were registered, half of which were with Mediterranean countries. With Renew (77 seats) tobacco representatives spoke 16 times, including 6 times with Lithuanian representatives.

There were also 7 appointments with non-aligned MPs, 4 times with the Greens/European Free Alliance (53 seats), 4 times with the Left Group (46 seats) and once with the right-wing radical Europe of Sovereign Nations (25 seats).

Health organisations: 39 meetings

It is mainly parliamentarians from Italy (33 meetings), Germany (27), Spain (20), Sweden (18), Portugal (12) and Lithuania (12) who had conversations with tobacco lobbyists. Advocates of anti-tobacco and health organizations visited mainly Romanian (10 meetings) and French (5) delegates. But the number of meetings that have been held by this side with MEPs contrasts sharply with those of the tobacco lobbyists. Health advocates had a total of 39 meetings, one fifth of the number of conversations that the tobacco lobby has now had.

The comparison shows that the health lobby is trailing the industry 5-1, while the latter should actually be denied access to the European Parliament altogether according to the agreements in the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). Because that is the core of Article 5.3 in the treaty: parliamentarians, like other policymakers, should not allow themselves to be influenced by the tobacco industry when they have to decide on tobacco policy.

See the dossier ‘Lobbying contacts European Parliament‘.