The Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU) has just launched an online-petition demanding the President of the Commission, José Manuel Barroso, to end the secrecy and release the full facts about “Dalligate” – a scandal described as the biggest interference of the tobacco lobby in European politics to date.
Under the right to ‘Freedom of Information’, ALTER EU requested meaningful information from the European Commission as to the number of tobacco lobbyists who met with the Cabinet of the President of the European Commission, the Secretary General of the European Commission, and John Dalli, former Health Commissioner. MEPs also tabled 154 parliamentary questions.
The results show that other officials met with the tobacco industry in the past few years, without necessarily being transparent about it – whilst this is requested by the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, of which the EU is a party.
ALTER-EU is of the opinion that the Commission urgently needs to use more rigorous measures to avoid undue influence, by introducing far stricter transparency and ethics rules around its contacts with lobbyists, and ensure these rules are stringently enforced. The Coalition aims to strengthen the pressure on the President of the Europe.