The European Ombudsman, Emily O'Reilly, has found the Barroso Commission was not transparent enough about its meetings with the tobacco industry. She called on the Juncker Commission from now on proactively to publish online all meetings with tobacco lobbyists, or their legal representatives, as well as the minutes of those meetings.

The Ombudsman's inquiry concluded that the Commission's approach to publicising such meetings is, with the exception of DG Health, inadequate, unreliable and unsatisfactory. In most of the cases, the Commission publishes information about such meetings only in response to access to documents requests or questions from MEPs. The Ombudsman found that certain meetings with lawyers representing the tobacco industry were not considered as meetings for the purpose of lobbying.

According to the Ombudsman, the Commission is not fully implementing UN World Health Organisation (WHO) rules and guidelines governing transparency and