28 August 2026 – The European Ombudsman is scrutinising DG Trade’s contacts with the tobacco industry. The same Directorate General writes steel tariffs, quotas and Melt and Pour rules. A documented meeting with a medium sized steel trader and a head of unit subject to publication requirements has been missing from the register for eight months. How many meetings between EUROFER and the Commission remain unknown?
Tobacco and Steel: DG Trade and its Transparency Issues
Since July, only around 18.3 million tonnes of steel imports into the EU remain duty free. Above that, a 50 per cent tariff applies. On top of this come Melt and Pour, CBAM and new documentary requirements. These rules were written in the Directorate General for Trade. Who was sitting at the table while they were drafted cannot be reconstructed from the public record. That this is not an isolated failure is currently being demonstrated by an entirely different dossier.
Six Meetings, Zero Transparency
European Ombudsman Teresa Anjinho has been investigating DG Trade’s dealings with the tobacco industry since 18 August 2026. The allegation concerns regular, unnecessary and non transparent contacts. Investigations identified at least six meetings with Philip Morris International between September 2022 and 2024, none of which appeared on the transparency pages. The Commission subsequently took up issues that were useful to the company, including in relation to Mexico and Türkiye. There is no evidence that those countries changed their rules as a result. The real scandal is therefore a different one: privileged access without accountable public transparency.
What is new about the case is mainly the date. The Commission was already criticised in 2016 for its handling of tobacco lobbyists, and again in 2023. At the time, the Ombudsman’s office found that only two Directorates General proactively published their contacts regardless of staff seniority. All other departments did not. Trade included.
Anjinho is now demanding 59 unredacted documents. More importantly, however, she is requesting the complete list of all meetings and telephone calls with the tobacco industry and its representatives from 2023 to 2026, regardless of department, hierarchical level or registration status. That wording is politically explosive.
Steel Policy Follows the Same Principle
Because in steel, the same Directorate General decides over billions in value, quotas and market access. The Commission states that it consulted the entire value chain on the new steel rules. Its own Staff Working Document of almost 70 pages, however, shows how closely parts of the argument follow the producer side. EUROFER appears repeatedly as a data source, including for employment, production sites and market forecasts. Important figures are hidden behind expensive paywalls operated by external data brokers, even though EUROSTAT could and should have provided them. Once again, the document does not identify a separate SME test, even though the Commission is required to carry one out.
With CBAM, the logic was even more remarkable. The Commission already acknowledged in 2021 that the relative compliance costs for SMEs were likely to be higher than for large companies. It nevertheless did not conduct an SME test because it assumed that mainly large companies would be affected.
The Missing Meeting Is Not a Borderline Case
The gaps in transparency can be documented in practice. On 12 December 2025, Gerber Steel met with the responsible unit of DG Trade to discuss the planned steel tariffs, import quotas and their negative effects on small and medium sized enterprises. The email correspondence available to us documents the date and subject. Participants included Pauline Weinzierl, Head of the Trade and Industrial Policy Unit, TRADE.E.4, and Enrique Arrieta, Policy Officer in the same unit responsible for steel and aluminium, who had already been involved in designing the EU safeguard measure.
That is decisive. Under Commission Decision 2024/3082, which has applied since January 2025, heads of unit are expressly classified as staff with management functions. Their meetings with interest representatives must be published. In addition, minutes must be prepared setting out the main issues discussed, the positions taken and, where applicable, the conclusions. Deadline: two weeks.
More than eight months later, the meeting is still missing, and apparently no minutes were ever prepared. The Commission list for Gerber Steel, last updated on 28 August 2026, contains exactly one appointment: an online meeting on 16 April 2025 with the Secretariat General, subject “SMEs in steel sector”. What has been published, therefore, is the listening exercise. What has not been published is the meeting with the unit that actually writes the rules.
Delete It, Leave It, Let It Run
The pattern extends beyond DG Trade. In June 2026, Anjinho found maladministration because a request for access to a Signal message from the French President to Ursula von der Leyen had remained unanswered in the President’s cabinet for 15 months. By then, the message concerning the Mercosur negotiations had long since disappeared, deleted by the activated auto expiry function.
In the case of the Taranto steelworks, meanwhile, the Ombudsman has been examining since 2025 why the Commission allowed its infringement proceedings against Ilva to remain dormant for eleven years and never referred the case to the European Court of Justice. Eleven years of patience for a major Italian steelworks. A 50 per cent tariff for SMEs.
Who Is Actually Helping to Write the Laws?
If even a documented meeting with a medium sized steel trader and a head of unit subject to publication requirements never appears in the transparency register, how reliable are the published figures on meetings with the large industry associations? How many discussions with EUROFER and the steel producers are we actually aware of? And, more importantly, how many, and what they involve, remain unknown?
The difference compared with the tobacco case is therefore becoming smaller, not larger. There, the Ombudsman is now explicitly examining all meetings and telephone calls, regardless of hierarchical level and registration status. In steel, it is time to start asking the same uncomfortable questions, including in relation to trade defence measures where DG Trade, when complaints are raised, effectively reviews itself.
Transparency is not just a nice-to-have extra, but a fundamental building block of true democracy! Anyone who closes markets with 50 per cent tariffs, allocates import quotas and burdens companies with CBAM reporting obligations must disclose who actually helped write those rules. Otherwise, industrial policy becomes client politics and interest politics. The tobacco case shows more than clearly how far the Commission is prepared to go.
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