Tobacco lobby steps up in Brussels: more than 400 meetings with EU lawmakers as rules are rewritten

As the European Union prepares to overhaul its tobacco and nicotine legislation, industry lobbying in Brussels has sharply intensified. Since the current European Parliament took office in the summer of 2024, lawmakers have declared more than 400 meetings with tobacco and nicotine lobbyists, compared with about 100 in the entire previous 2019-2024 term — roughly four times as many meetings in just over two years as in the previous five.

The figures come from data collected by the Smoke Free Partnership, a coalition of anti-smoking NGOs, from the EU Transparency Register, in which European lawmakers are required to publicly disclose their meetings.

Most of the meetings were with right-leaning lawmakers. Some 75 per cent were with members of the centre-right European People's Party (EPP), the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and the far-right Patriots for Europe groups.

Behind the surge lies a series of major EU legislative initiatives. Revisions to the tobacco and nicotine tax, product and advertising directives are under way, including a proposal to set minimum taxes on nicotine and tobacco products and to expand the definition of what is covered. EU plans to curb heart disease and cancer also directly affect the sector.

Tilly Metz, a lawmaker with the Greens/European Free Alliance, has sharply criticised the trend. She said she finds it 'scandalous and shocking' that there are more meetings with the tobacco industry than with the NGOs and associations that advocate for people to stop smoking, and that regularly meeting the industry is 'completely incompatible' with working on health files. Citing the World Health Organization's tobacco control treaty, she said policymakers should meet tobacco lobbyists only when strictly necessary to discuss the sector's regulation.

Under the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, public health policies must be protected against the industry's commercial interests. The treaty does not ban lobbying, but its implementation guidelines say interactions with the sector should be limited to what is strictly necessary for regulating it, and should be transparent. The industry also points to a 2022 European Court of Justice judgment stating that the treaty does not prohibit industry participation in implementing tobacco control; it is intended solely to prevent tobacco control policies from being influenced by the industry's interests.

Kristina Mauer-Stender, WHO Europe's regional adviser on tobacco control, said the treaty's scope extends beyond reducing tobacco consumption. Article 5.2(b), she noted, requires parties to adopt effective measures 'for preventing and reducing tobacco consumption, nicotine addiction and exposure to tobacco smoke', so preventing nicotine addiction is an explicit objective of the Convention's implementation. Decisions of the Conference of the Parties have also progressively addressed novel and emerging tobacco and nicotine products, she added.

The tobacco companies say they operate within the rules and present their perspective transparently. British American Tobacco's head of fiscal affairs, Simon Trussler, said that like any other business in Europe, the company has legitimate experiences and arguments to put forward 'because we see what's going on on the ground'. He said the company complied with all regulations transparently, claimed the WHO framework has been 'misquoted and misunderstood', and argued that the Convention's scope is limited to products made from tobacco leaf.

Philip Morris International, whose meetings accounted for the most of any tobacco company, pointed to its contribution to the European economy and said the firm is 'undergoing a deep transformation towards a smoke-free future'. The Marlboro manufacturer, which also sells nicotine pouches, vapes and heated tobacco products, said it was proud to engage with any MEP open to discussion 'on the basis of science and facts'.

A prominent example raised by critics is the EPP's role in a non-binding cardiovascular disease report this summer. The draft spoke of nicotine having the 'same' regulation as tobacco; EPP lawmakers proposed changing that to 'appropriate rules'. The change was supported by Jessica Polfjärd and Elena Nevado del Campo, who had each held the third-highest number of meetings with industry. The final report adopted by the European Parliament reflected the proposal. Romana Jerković of the Socialists and Democrats, who led the report in the health committee, said at the time she wished it could have been more ambitious on tobacco.

Erin Roman, director of the Smoke Free Partnership, said spikes in meetings cluster around key policy initiatives such as the tax directive. 'While meetings alone cannot prove direct influence on decisions, they highlight the industry's opportunities to shape the legislative debate,' she said, adding that transparency alone was not sufficient and meetings should be only 'strictly necessary for effective regulation'. Spain's Socialists and Democrats MEP Nicolás González Casares put it more bluntly: 'Amendments weakening new tobacco products rules in a plan to fight Europe's biggest killer didn't come from nowhere: the groups meeting the industry most are the ones watering down the rules.'

Individually, the MEP with the most industry meetings this term is the Patriots' Auke Zijlstra, with 14, followed by the ECR's Pietro Fiocchi with nine, and the EPP's Michalis Hadjipantela, Elena Nevado del Campo and Jessica Polfjärd with eight each. Zijlstra said he always speaks with any industry when a legislative proposal on the table would impact it, that taking an interest in the field is 'an absolute part of the job', and that he did not think the industry was overrepresented, noting 'there are a lot of consumers out there'. He encouraged NGOs to ask for more meetings to explain their point of view.

A spokesperson for Hadjipantela said he engages with a broad range of stakeholders as a member of six committees, 'remains fully independent in his assessments and decisions', and that meeting a stakeholder does not imply endorsement. Nevado del Campo said her meetings were because of the large number of tobacco producers in her region and her duty to listen to a large employer, and that she also met groups on the other side of the debate. 'My commitment is with a healthy Europe and, at the same time, to those farmers who get up every day to work the fields of Extremadura,' she said. Fiocchi and Polfjärd did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.

The Smoke Free Partnership said it has faced 'significant pressure' on its resources since the withdrawal of EU operating grants last year; it has continued coordinating independent public health expertise, but reduced funding means difficult choices about priorities, and an imbalance with the industry's resources. A large number of the meetings covered the tobacco taxation directive, currently making its way through the Council of the EU, which will set minimum taxes on nicotine and tobacco products and expand the definition of what is covered. Other declared topics included the tobacco products and advertising directives and 'harm reduction'. With the European Commission preparing several updated regulations on tobacco and nicotine products, the data suggests the lobbying push is set to continue.