EU’s new transparency move offers stepping stone to slash Big Tobacco policy influence

Over two years after ‘Qatargate’ shook the EU to its core, the European Parliament (EP) has taken a bold, if belated, step to tighten the screws on lobbying. From May 1, all external interest representatives must register their visit’s purpose and activate their badge upon entering parliamentary buildings – a basic measure aimed at closely monitoring access to lawmakers behind closed doors.

Eliciting predictable criticism from industry lobbyists, this transparency effort forms part of a broader package aimed at enhancing accountability following a series of scandals that have exposed the bloc’s weak anti-corruption guardrails. Yet, long before Qatar and Huawei grabbed the headlines, Big Tobacco’s undue influence in Brussels had already revealed the ease with which powerful industries could sway critical policies.

As the EU prepares to revie its tobacco control regulations later this year, MEPs must build on this transparency reform momentum and ensure the overhaul protects EU citizens. Beyond curbing corporate interference, this approach would help counter the erosion of public trust fueling the rise of far-right parties, which – despite their anti-establishment posturing – are all too comfortable preserving a status quo that serves entrenched interests.

Hololei’s Qatar scandal in the spotlight

When the Qatargate scandal first surfaced in December 2022, investigations in Brussels centred on a handful of MEPs accused of accepting large cash payments to promote Qatari and Moroccan interests. However, it soon became clear that Qatar's EU policy influence extended beyond the EP.

In Qatargate’s immediate fallout, a POLITICO investigation conducted by Mari Eccles, Samuel Stolton and Joshua Posaner revealed that Henrik Hololei – then Director-General for Mobility and Transport at the European Commission – had accepted nine free business-class flights from Qatar Airways between 2015 and 2021 while overseeing the negotiation of a major EU-Qatar aviation agreement.

Crucially, six of Hololei’s flights took place during the negotiation period and four were paid for by either the Qatari government or entities closely linked to it, with the final air travel deal granting Qatar Airways near-unrestricted access to EU airports and the bloc’s 450 million-strong consumer market compared to the sub-3 million person market opened up to the EU.

Prompting an investigation by the EU’s anti-fraud office, OLAF, these corruption allegations led to Hololei’s ousting from his post, pay cut and quiet reassignment to an hors classe advisor role within the Commission’s DG of International Partnerships (INTPA) – a position he still holds to this day, although perhaps not for long. In November 2024, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) announced the opening of a criminal investigation into Hololei’s alleged corruption following journalist Jean Quatremer’s sharp criticism of the Commission’s foot-dragging pursuit of the case in French newspaper Libération.

Presumably feeling the heat, the EU executive launched internal disciplinary proceedings against Hololei on 5 May regarding possible breaches of transparency and conflict-of-interest rules, with Hololei’s potential sanctions if found guilty ranging from a written warning to full dismissal. As Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) campaigner Vicky Cann has rightly reflected, Hololei's travel program "exposes how EU ethics rules are not robust enough, and how enforcement of current rules is far too weak" – a harsh reality underscored by a parallel Commission lobbying scandal in the Commission during Hololei's years of Qatari travel.

Hoffmann and Borkowski at heart of Dentsu affair

In late 2022, the late French MEP Michèle Rivasi first broke details via the French media outlet Le Canard Enchainé of alleged corruption involving the EU Executive and Swiss firm Dentsu Tracking concerning the latter's role in the bloc's controversial tobacco traceability scheme. In the ensuing years, former French MEPs Anne-Sophie Pelletier and Pierre Larrouturou have led work with Rivasi to widely expose the conflict-of-interest at the heart of this case, dubbed the 'Dentsu-Hoffmann affair.

Shortly after securing its Commission contract – awarded without an open tender, as repeatedly criticised by French MEPs and their civil society partners – Dentsu Tracking hired Jan Hoffmann, a former senior Commission official who had worked on tobacco traceability at DG SANTE. This move raised major revolving-door concerns, given Hoffmann’s position during Dentsu’s lobbying push for the traceability contract – an effort notably enabled by Big Tobacco’s backing.

Mirroring Hololei's fate, the Hoffmann affair sparked a wave of demotions and reassignments within DG SANTE in 2023. Chief among these Commission officials was Filip Borkowski, Hoffmann’s former supervisor, who was moved from his role as Deputy Head of Unit to a lower-ranking case handler position at DG CNECT. Interestingly, Borkowski had previously defended the EU’s traceability system as fully aligned with WHO protocols, parroting the false claims made by Dentsu and other Big Tobacco-allied firms involved in the EU's traceability system – namely, Swiss-based Inexto as well as France’s Atos and its subsidiaries.

As revealed in last year's White Paper produced by Pelletier, Rivasi and Larrouturou in partnership with leading NGOs and academic institutions such as the CEO, the Smoke-Free Partnership and the University of Bath, the tobacco industry has mobilised these traceability providers as trojan horses, capitalising on their historic links to the Philip Morris International-developed Codentify system long discredited by tobacco control experts.

Crucially, this strategy – equally deployed in the UK, where Dentsu Tracking operates a similar traceability system – has allowed the tobacco industry to shape tobacco control policy to its commercial advantage and feign compliance with the WHO FCTC Protocol's strict rules on industry-independent traceability. Consequently, the EU and UK have been left with failed systems facilitating a sharp rise in illicit trade and tens of billions in annual excise tax losses.

Uphill anti-corruption battle ahead

In the months ahead, civil society advocates and MEPs in the SANT Committee, such as president Adam Jarubas and Laurent Castillo, have a critical opportunity to counter years of Big Tobacco interference by advancing a comprehensive overhaul of the EU’s tobacco control framework that the industry has long delayed. Central to this effort must be an industry-independent track and trace system and stronger transparency rules, as required by the WHO FCTC Protocol, with a meaningful win here potentially setting the tone for broader EU-wide reforms.

Moving forward, MEP reformers will have to navigate a hostile political landscape marked by the rise of far-right parties that not only oppose stronger tobacco regulation but are actively undermining the transparency agenda and increasingly dividing the EPP party. Encouragingly, the EP’s anti-transparency contingency was dealt an important defeat on 30 April with the passage of Renaissance MEP Olivier Chastel’s amendment calling for bolstered institutional protections against undue influence, key roles for OLAF and EPPO in this effort, and the rapid establishment of an inter-institutional body responsible for upholding the EU’s ethical standards.

In the current climate, the EU can thus no longer afford to treat transparency as a tick-box exercise. The recent reforms in the EP are a necessary first step, but real credibility will only come from MEP’s sustained progress. Their choice is clear: take bold action to prove democracy in Brussels still works for its citizens or risk ceding ground to political groups that thrive on public disillusionment.