The European Network on Smoking Prevention, which has been awarded a lucrative contract to support the implementation and further development of the EU’s tobacco control policy and legislation, declared that its staff members “have not…had any professional involvement in any project related to tobacco in the last four years”.
ENSP lobbies the European Commission on tobacco control and has publicly called for flavoured vapes to be banned. Its mission, according to its website, is to “promote comprehensive tobacco control policies at both national and European levels”.
The declaration was uncovered by Clearing the Air, which has seen minutes of the EU Commission’s meeting with the European Ombudsman. The Ombudsman is investigating the Commission for “alleged conflicts of interest” in awarding a contract to “support the implementation and further development of the EU’s tobacco control policy and legislation”.
Clearing the Air does not know which ENSP staff members are referred to in the document, nor their backgrounds. We have asked the Commission for this, and for various other documents related to the procedure, using an Access to Documents Request (the European equivalent of a Freedom of Information Request). The Commission has so far denied that request. Clearing the Air is appealing that decision.
However, it seems unlikely that staff members at an organisation called the European Network on Smoking Prevention had no professional involvement in tobacco in the four years prior to the signing of the contract.
Pieter Cleppe, editor of the Brussels Report said:
"If confirmed, this looks like a clear example of the European Commission picking advisors to come up with the advice it wishes to receive”.
The Commission’s own guidance on conflicts of interest state that a conflict of interest exists where the ‘impartial and objective exercise of the functions of a financial actor or other person…is compromised for reasons involving family, emotional life, political or national affinity, economic interest or any other direct or indirect personal interest.’ Conflicts of interest can also result from “involvement with non-governmental…organisations”.
The Commission is also required to avoid ‘situations which may objectively be perceived as a conflict of interest’.
The story comes amid a flurry of accusations that the European Commission is institutionally biased against safer nicotine products, and wants to adopt both bans and heavy handed regulations regardless of what either the scientific evidence or the public says.
In April 2023, MEP Sara Skyttedal first questioned the Commission on its bias in hiring ENSP to help it write new rules on safer nicotine products, noting that “ENSP lobbies the Commission on tobacco policy and advocates for a total ban on safer nicotine products…many tobacco control organisations and consumers support the development and use of safer nicotine products. [The European] Parliament stated that e-cigarettes can play a positive role in reducing the use of traditional cigarettes. The ENSP holds the opposite view”.
MEPs Jessica Polfjard and Jurgen Warborn wrote separately to the Commission in the same month, complaining that questions contained in the EU executive’s consultation on new tobacco control rules were not objective.
“[With] wording such as asking the respondent to rate the level of threat each type of product poses or ‘Emerging products represent a major risk due to their addictive nature and their impacts on public health’, one would have reason to question the neutrality of this questionnaire”, the pair wrote in a letter to outgoing EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides.
“At the heart of this is the European Commission's hostility towards less damaging alternatives to smoking tobacco or even towards alternatives that are not damaging at all”, said Pieter Cleppe.
“Anyone who cares about reducing cancer incidence should focus on Sweden, which for decades has enjoyed an exemption from the EU requirement to ban certain healthier alternatives to tobacco. Sweden has effectively served as a test case here, and the difference with the rest of the EU is clear for everyone to see, given the country's much lower smoking and cancer incidence rates."
