MEPs Meet Tobacco Lobbyists Four Times as Often as in Previous Term
Since summer 2024, European Parliament members have declared more than 400 meetings with tobacco and nicotine lobbyists, against about 100 in the 2019–2024 term. The rise comes as the EU rewrites its tobacco and nicotine rules.
Members of the European Parliament have declared more than 400 meetings with tobacco and nicotine lobbyists since the current term began in summer 2024. The previous term, 2019–2024, saw about 100, meaning meetings are now roughly four times as frequent. The figures come from the EU Transparency Register, where lawmakers must publicly disclose their meetings. They were collected by the Smoke Free Partnership, a coalition of NGOs, and analyzed by POLITICO. The increase coincides with the EU overhauling several key tobacco and nicotine laws.
Who is meeting industry most
About 75% of the meetings were with right-leaning MEPs from the European People's Party, the European Conservatives and Reformists, and the far-right Patriots for Europe. Auke Zijlstra of the Patriots declared the most, 14, followed by Pietro Fiocchi of the ECR with nine. EPP members Michalis Hadjipantela, Elena Nevado del Campo and Jessica Polfjärd each declared eight.
Philip Morris International was met at least 178 times and British American Tobacco 60 times. Data from Transparency International EU ranks Philip Morris fourth, behind Meta, Google and Apple, for the number of MEPs and assistants it has met. Italian lawmakers were involved in more than one in five meetings.
Dispute over the WHO treaty
Greens MEP Tilly Metz called regular meetings incompatible with work on health files. She cited the World Health Organization's tobacco control treaty, whose guidelines say policymakers should meet the industry only when strictly necessary for regulating it. The industry says it operates within the rules and points to a 2022 European Court of Justice judgment. WHO Europe's Kristina Mauer-Stender said the treaty also covers preventing nicotine addiction.
Criticism has also followed the EPP's softening of wording on nicotine regulation in a non-binding cardiovascular disease report this summer. The MEPs concerned say meetings are part of their job and do not imply endorsement of industry views. The Smoke Free Partnership notes that meetings alone cannot prove influence on decisions.
