Transparency group: ‘After Dalli, more Brussels officials should resign’

Minutes of meetings between European Commission officials and tobacco lobbyists were not transparently declared, documents published under freedom of information laws have revealed.

The European transparency group Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) said meetings held between Barroso cabinet officials and others from the secretariat-general with tobacco representatives, would mean more resignations are in order if transparency rules inside the European Commission were being strictly followed.

"CEO found that Commission president José Manuel Barroso's own cabinet and his department's secretariat-general have had several undisclosed meetings with tobacco industry lobbyists," CEO said, citing five meetings with Philip Morris International, the European Smokeless Tobacco Council (ESTOC), Swedish Match, and the European Cigar Manufacturers Association.

"If Dalli had to resign because of undisclosed meetings with tobacco lobbyists, the same logic should also apply to other members of Barroso's cabinet and to high-level Commission officials at the secretariat-general and other DGs."

READ the documents

• Email from Swedish Match to Secretariat General and DG SANCO, 18 September 2012.
• Email correspondence between Spyros Pappas and Maria Helena Vieira (Cab Barroso), June 2012.
• Email correspondence Bodo Mehrlein (BdZ) with Henning Klaus (Cab Barroso) and Guillaume Morel (Cab Barroso), November 2011.
• DG SANCO internal email, 15 June 2010. (page 2)
• DG SANCO internal email, 3 May 2010. (page 1)

CEO said that past statements by the EC that former Commissioner for health John Dalli was asked to resign for breaching transparency rules on a meeting with a tobacco lobbyist, would mean other high-level Commission officials in José Barroso's cabinet, the secretariat-general and other directorates, should resign.

"If Dalli's resignation is based on a violation of the World Health Organisation rules, then numerous high-level Commission officials should also resign... [this is not] to say that Dalli or the other key actors in the lobbying scandal are guilty or innocent. The Commission [must] respond to demands from MEPs and thousands of European citizens to clear the smoke and clarify what happened in the lobbying scandal that led to the resignation of Dalli," CEO said in a report.

According to the transparency group, Dalli was revealed by newspaper European Voice to have been asked to resign over an infraction in an article in the WHO's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, to which the EU is a signatory.

This was also mentioned by OLAF's director Giovanni Kessler, who conducted the investigation into an alleged €60 million bribe that Maltese restaurateur Silvio Zammit would have asked to influence tobacco laws being pushed by Dalli.

"Kessler [told MEPs] that Dalli had acted against the spirit of the Commissioners' Code of Conduct and the Framework Convention of Tobacco Control 'which Mr Dalli was well aware of'."

The EU is one of 175 signatories to the UN's tobacco treaty, whose guidelines state that interactions with the tobacco industry should be conducted transparently.

Dalli is would have breached this code of conduct by having met Maltese lawyer Gayle Kimberley, who was acting as a lobbyist for snus producers Swedish Match - the Swedish company that reported the alleged bribe to the EC back in May 2012.

"Dalli's meetings with tobacco lobbyists at his office in Malta were not transparent, but could this be the cause of Dalli's resignation? Does the Commission have a strict approach around contacts with tobacco lobbyists, as prescribed in the WHO rules? The answer would be no. The Commission's implementation of the [WHO treaty] is sketchy at best," CEO said.

Unreported meetings at DG Sanco

CEO is insisting that even the health directorate-general Sanco has not publicized all its meetings with the tobacco industry.

CEO research shows that the list of ten meetings over the past 12 months does not include three meetings - revealed by CEO's freedom of information requests - between Sanco officials and director-general Robert Madelin with British American Tobacco and the Confederation of the European Community Cigarette Manufacturers.

CEO has pointed out that only DG Sanco actually discloses its meetings online, unlike other DGs inside Brussels.

Guidelines not implemented

CEO also said that the Commission is not strict with the implementation of WHO rules, because lobby group Luther Pendragon - which supports clients against the EU's plain packaging rules for cigarettes - also lists the European Commission as its client on its website.

CEO said former health commissioner Pavel Telicka's own lobbying firm BXL Consulting has worked for British American Tobacco, and that a number of tobacco lobbies and associations are not even registered in the EC's transparency registry.