Amid mounting scrutiny of the European Commission’s transparency issues, an MEP group devoted to tobacco control unveiled the findings of its new White Paper at a parliamentary event on 11 April spotlighting the tobacco industry’s deeply-problematic lobbying influence in Brussels’s halls of power.

Led by France’s Anne-Sophie Pelletier of The Left party, S&D Pierre Larrouturou and the late Michèle Rivasi of the Greens/EFA, the European Parliament’s Working Group on Tobacco Products held a series of cross-party roundtables between 2020 and 2023 to inform the White Paper with the expertise of leading civil society actors, including the University of Bath’s Tobacco Control Research Group, the EU-level SmokeFree Partnership and France’s Alliance Against Tobacco (ACT).

As showcased at the launch event, the White Paper’s broad coalition of contributors have concluded that the EU executive has excessively exposed itself to Big Tobacco interference, with its insights offering a foundation for tightening transparency regulations and progressing a World Health Organization-compliant tobacco control agenda.

Costs of unmet tobacco control ambitions

The tobacco industry’s ongoing machinations in Brussels have contributed to Europe’s stubbornly-high smoking rates, with the White Paper revealing severe, wide-ranging consequences.

Every year, tobacco consumption causes 700,000 premature deaths across the continent – 25 times more than road accidents – making smoking “the single largest avoidable health risk, and the most significant cause of premature death in the EU,” according to the European Commission.

In his White Paper introduction, MEP Larrouturou further emphasises tobacco’s cataclysmic impact on national health services – in France, for example, smoking generates an annual €156 billion in healthcare and social costs, exceeding the industry’s tax contribution tenfold.

Beyond its public health menace, the tobacco industry inflicts considerable and underdiscussed environmental damage, with a WHO report warning that tobacco production accounts for 5% of global deforestation and generates a carbon footprint equal to 3 million transatlantic flights.

Given this widespread societal harm, Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan includes the headline ambition to create a Tobacco-Free Generation “where less than 5% of the population uses tobacco by 2040.”

Yet, as the SmokeFree Partnership’s (SFP) Lilia Olefir flags in the White Paper, “the invisible hand of the tobacco industry” has led to ongoing delays for the key policies needed to deliver on this commitment, namely the revisions of the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) and Tobacco Taxation Directive (TTD). Initially slated for late 2022, the Commission has failed to provide a clear explanation for its concerning inability to translate a promising policy vision into strong public health legislation.

Demasking industry’s “strategy of doubt”

According to the SFP, the tobacco industry has doubled down on its stalling tactics as the TPD-TDD revision process threatens its commercial interests by promising higher taxes and an independent track and trace system in alignment with the WHO Framework Convention of Tobacco Control and Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products (ITP).

To thwart the twin pillars of the EU’s tobacco control agenda, Big Tobacco has employed a cynical “strategy of doubt,” pouring tens of millions into lobbying efforts to discourage effective regulation.

As exposed in the White Paper, the tobacco industry’s playbook has largely rested on weaponising Europe’s “parallel trade” – a term its authors stress reflects manufacturers’ multifaceted role in feeding the problem.

From overproducing cigarettes in low-tax, Eastern European member-states to oversupplying small, low-tax Western European countries bordering high-tax markets like France, Big Tobacco has actively created a parallel market fueled by genuine product.

For example, in 2020, the industry supplied Andorra with 850 million cigarettes despite its annual consumption of “only” 120 million.

The consequent – and intended – leakage of parallel tobacco into major smoking countries has significantly hindered the bloc’s tobacco control agenda, with an estimated 60-70% of this market sourced from manufacturers despite the industry’s self-serving analysis.

Track and track manipulation reflects EU’s lobbying exposure

A key product of Big Tobacco’s “doubt factory,” as MEP Rivasi dubbed it, Philip Morris International (PMI) pays €11 million every year for the KPMG report on illicit tobacco in Europe, a methodologically-discredited study which ACT’s Martin Drago has notably dismissed as a “communication tool for the tobacco industry.”

The KPMG report’s overestimation of the parallel trade and misleading emphasis on counterfeits to mask the industry’s complicity allows it to erroneously lay the blame on high tobacco taxes, dissuading stronger EU regulation while wrongfully justifying its track and trace role.

Using media outlets and EU policymakers, Big Tobacco’s incessant spreading of disinformation masquerading as legitimate scientific research has seen the “gangrene” of industry lobbying influence become “systemic” in Brussels according to Rivasi’s White Paper contribution.

In recent years, the industry’s successful TPD-TTD revision delay and indirect control over the EU track and trace system – the latter of which has been spotlighted by the conflict-of-interest scandal involving former Commission official Jan Hoffman’s role in awarding industry-affiliated Dentsu Tracking the contract shortly before accepting a position with the company – has been made possible by the EU executive’s woefully inadequate transparency safeguards.

As European ombudsman Emily O’Reilly recently reaffirmed, the Commission has failed to consistently take and publish minutes of its meetings with tobacco lobbyists and strictly limit these interactions, dangerously exposing its public health policies to Big Tobacco interests.

Paving the way for ‘tobacco-free’ future

Moving forward, Both Rivasi and O’Reilly have rightly argued that investigations are urgently needed to hold corrupted EU officials accountable, while the White Paper recommends the creation of an independent ethics committee and a mandatory Transparency Register to ensure compliance with the WHO FCTC’s Article 5 lobbying rules.

More broadly, its authors stress that the TPD-TTD revision expected after June’s European elections must incorporate the WHO ITP Protocol, particularly to align the bloc’s ineffective track and trace system with Article 8’s industry independence requirements.

Among a wide array of proposals, its authors equally recommend that Brussels increase minimum EU tobacco tax rates while imposing domestic delivery quotas to reduce parallel trade issues in low-tax, oversupplied regional hotspots, in accordance with the Protocol.

Where the Commission has failed to close its doors to Big Tobacco, the Parliament has risen to the occasion, with its cross-party initiative shedding light on the industry’s threat to the EU decision-making and public health goals.

After years of delay, policymakers must seize the upcoming opportunity to bolster its tobacco control framework and lay the ground for a healthier future in Europe.

Image credit: Andres Siimon via Unsplash

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