Dalligate: Transparency group says Barroso's people met tobacco lobbyists

Tobacco lobbyists and top European Commission officials held several quiet meetings over at least the past two years, the Brussels-based pro-transparency group Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) has been quoted as saying by the EU observer (http://euobserver.com/institutional/118530). Among them were people from commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso’s own cabinet, his secretariat-general and others in the commission's directorate for health and consumer affairs. The website pointed out that according to OLAF, the EU anti-fraud office, such undisclosed meetings with the tobacco industry are a direct violation of an article in the World Health Organisation's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Olaf chief Giovanni Kessler reportedly told euro-deputies at a closed-door meeting in October that the convention was mentioned in the John Dalli affair, which centered around his contacts with Swedish Match, a company that makes a type of mouth tobacco called snus. Commission guidelines echo the WHO convention. Its internal rules state that officials "should interact with the tobacco industry only when and to the extent strictly necessary" and must "ensure that such interactions are...