MEPs want tobacco minutes online

Two members of the European parliament are putting pressure on the Commission to publish online the minutes of meetings between its employees and tobacco interest groups.

In a preamble to two questions put to the Commission, the Ireland MEP, Lynn Boylan, and the Northern Ireland MEP, Martina Anderson, said that, in response to a complaint by transparency NGO Corporate Europe Observatory, the European Ombudsman had published on October 1 the conclusions of her investigation into the Commission’s current practice regarding interactions between its employees and tobacco industry representatives.

‘The Ombudsman clearly expressed the view that parties to the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control are required to take active measures both to limit the extent of interactions with the tobacco industry and to ensure transparency where such interactions occur,’ the MEPs said. ‘The Ombudsman found inherent weaknesses in the current practices of the Commission (with the exception of DG Health) vis-à-vis its interactions with the tobacco industry, which amounted to maladministration.

‘She found the Commission’s current compliance framework to be inadequate and recommended that the details and minutes of all meetings between Commission employees and tobacco interest groups be published online.’

The MEPs went on to ask whether the Commission planned to update its current framework in order to implement the Ombudsman’s recommendations and impose the same transparency obligations currently operating in DG Health on the rest of the Commission.

And they asked: ‘If not, why not?’