By Tabaknee

Since June 2024, tobacco lobbyists have held 220 meetings with MEPs. The revision of the Tobacco Tax Directive is currently the main topic of discussion. The lobby is trying to secure exemptions from the regulations for alternative nicotine products. Health organizations are offering little in return.

By the web editors

Two PVV MEPs are the only Dutch members of the European Parliament (EP) to 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 met with PMI three times, once together with the lobbying firm EUTOP Europe , which has British American Tobacco (BAT) as a client. That firm also contacted Zijlstra separately, who also met with Japan Tobacco International (JTI). The current revision of the Tobacco Excise Duty Directive was the topic of discussion in all these meetings. Diepeveen had introductory meetings with PMI and JTI at the beginning of this year and visited PMI in Bergen op Zoom in June.

This information can be obtained from the overview of meetings between Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and tobacco industry lobbyists, which TabakNee has been keeping in a separate file since today . It is clear that lobbying of MEPs has intensified recently, following the publication in July of the European Commission (EC) of its proposal for the revision of the Tobacco Excise Duty Directive (TED). The revision of the Tobacco Products Directive is also on the agenda for the current parliamentary term.

Already 220 meetings

Since June 2024, 220 meetings between tobacco lobbyists and Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have been recorded in the European Parliament's Transparency Register. In the 30 meetings 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 gain traction in the EP for the "harm reduction" narrative, hoping to secure exemptions from the regulations for alternative, "smoke-free" nicotine products such as e-cigarettes, heated tobacco, and nicotine pouches. The Commission wants to tax these products similarly to traditional tobacco. The tobacco industry argues that this will remove the incentive for smokers to switch to a "less harmful" alternative.

Lobbying through the media

This harm reduction narrative is also becoming increasingly vocal in paid opinion pieces in media outlets focused on 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 spun off from Americans for Tax Reform that promotes free trade. The piece contains all the arguments the tobacco industry repeatedly uses to sow doubt about the true nature of all nicotine products: they are all addictive and harmful to health in one way or another. And in all cases, the industry's strategy remains to lure 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 was revealed 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 , revealed, among other things, that PMI had systematically mapped out all MEPs' positions on the tobacco issue and their potential for influence. There is no reason to think this would be different. PMI is by far the most active in the EP, holding 96 of the 220 meetings. BAT is far behind with 46 meetings, and JTI held 16 meetings.

European People's Party most visited

The number of meetings held by each political group in the EP shows that the industry is primarily targeting the European People's Party (EPP), which includes the CDA, BBB, and NSC from the Netherlands. Seventy-three of the 220 meetings were with members of this group, which, with 188 of the 720 seats, is also the largest group. However, the EPP also plays a key role in this issue because it can swing the vote either way, either for or against further measures to reduce nicotine use.

The lobby is primarily focused on the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR, 78 seats; SGP) with 49 meetings, and the far-right Patriots for Europe (84 seats, PVV) with 38 meetings. The Socialists and Democrats (S&D, 136 seats, PvdA) are less receptive to lobbyists, with 28 meetings recorded, half of which were with Mediterranean countries. With Renew (77 seats), which includes VVD and D66, tobacco representatives met 16 times, including six with Lithuanian representatives.

A further 7 meetings were held with non-aligned parliamentarians, 4 times with the Greens/European Free Alliance (53 seats, GroenLinks, Volt), 4 times with the Left Group (46 seats, PvdD) and 1 time with the right-wing radical Europe of Sovereign Nations (25 seats).

Health organizations: 39 meetings

It was mainly parliamentarians from Italy (33 meetings), Germany (27), Spain (20), Sweden (18), Portugal (12), and Lithuania (12) who held discussions with tobacco lobbyists. Advocates for anti-tobacco and health organizations sought more contact with Romanian (10 meetings) and French (5) delegates. However, the number of meetings held by these parties with MEPs contrasts sharply with those held by tobacco lobbyists. Health organizations held a total of 39 meetings, one-fifth of the number of meetings held by the tobacco lobby.

The comparison shows that the health lobby trails the industry by 5-1, while the latter, according to the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), should actually be completely denied access to the European Parliament. This is the core of Article 5.3 of the treaty: parliamentarians, like other policymakers, must not be influenced by the tobacco industry when deciding on tobacco policy.

See the file 'Lobby contacts European Parliament' .