#EPPgate: the European right wing in turmoil since our revelations

17 February 2026

Following BLOOM’s explosive revelations about American interference in the European Parliament and the very close ties between the European conservative right (EPP) and Trumpist circles, Swedish MEP Jörgen Warborn and senior EPP officials are in turmoil.

Our investigation, which was released on 5 February and shared under embargo to the media outlets Aftonbladet (Sweden) and Der Spiegel (Germany), has already caused quite a stir. In just a few days, the entire edifice of the European conservative right has been left rocked and reeling, with press conferences cancelled, silence in response to journalists’ questions, attacks on BLOOM, and hastily issued ethical statements posted on the European Parliament’s website.

BLOOM struck a nerve and triggered a political avalanche in the European Parliament by showing how the European right wing obediently followed the orders of the American fossil fuel industry and the Trump administration during the Omnibus I negotiations, which were sealed by an unprecedented alliance between the right wing and the European far right.

<<<READ OUR FULL INVESTIGATION ‘WARBORN IN THE USA’>>>

On one side, the rapporteur for the first Omnibus, Jörgen Warborn, is under fire from the media and the opposition in Sweden for his ethical breaches and failure to declare his conflicts of interest, which we reported in a complaint co-signed with Transparency International on 5 February 2025 to the Advisory Committee on the Conduct of Members of the European Parliament.

<<<Our joint complaint with Transparency International, to the Advisory Committee on the Conduct of Members of the European Parliament>>>

On the other side, the various political groups of the European ecological left reacted very quickly to our request for an inquiry committee so that Parliament can shed light on American interference within our European institutions.

<<<SIGN OUR PETITION FOR AN INQUIRY COMMITTEE>>>

BLOOM is calling on all MEPs committed to the strategic autonomy of the EU, the climate protection, democracy and the European economy, to vote in favour of setting up an inquiry committee. The stakes go far beyond political divisions and are a matter of sovereignty and security that is essential for the European Union.

An investigation with multiple ramifications

Our investigation has revealed the numerous links and allegiances of Swedish MEP Jörgen Warborn and the leadership of the European conservative right with Trumpist circles and the far right, including:

• A meeting between Jörgen Warborn and Manfred Weber, the president of the EPP, with the Heritage Foundation, a powerful conservative think tank that has converted to Trumpism, in December 2024.
• The key role played by Jörgen Warborn in American interference, as he was the privileged partner and relay for American industrial lobbies within the European Parliament throughout 2025.
• An in-depth look at the origins of the alliance between the EPP and the Trumpist movement, with the participation of Jörgen Warborn, Manfred Weber and Dolors Montserrat in the forums of the International Democracy Union (IDU), an organisation that brings together conservative, Trumpist and neo-fascist parties from around the world.
• Potential conflicts of interest, as Jörgen Warborn is also president of two lobbies, SME Europe and SME Global.

Following this investigation, on 6 February 2026, we filed a report with Transparency International to the Advisory Committee on the Conduct of Members of the European Parliament.

Our investigation has sparked a political storm in Sweden

In Sweden, Aftonbladet‘s revelations have caused a political storm, with Swedish Green and Social Democratic politicians questioning practices that “almost seem like corruption”, and which have pushed the far right to the centre of the European political scene, to the detriment of EU interests.

But that’s not all.

Opaque trips to Washington

At the end of our investigation, we highlighted the many grey areas that remain. While the EPP and Jörgen Warborn declined to comment on our revelations in Politico, Swedish journalist Lisa Rostlund successfully investigated the financing of the Swedish MP’s trips to Washington. On 5 February 2026, Jörgen Warborn told the daily newspaper Aftonbladet that “the EPP and the European Parliament” paid for the flights, and that “IDU (International Democracy Union) paid for accommodation in 2025“.

This raises a number of questions:

• If Jörgen Warborn travelled to Washington as president of the SME Global business lobby, the corporate arm of the IDU, as announced on his LinkedIn account, why was his trip partly paid for with European public money?
• If Jörgen Warborn received funding from the IDU, why did he not file a declaration of participation in an event organised by third parties in his transparency register at the European Parliament? And why was no declaration made of meetings with lobbyists and representatives of US public authorities encountered on these occasions?

 

These trips to Washington, as president of a lobby group, potentially constitute several ethical breaches: a lack of transparency that contravenes the European Parliament’s rules of conduct, a conflict of interest between his roles as MEP and president of a lobby group and unclear funding, involving a mix of public funds and private foreign funds.

Similar questions arise for Dolors Montserrat and Manfred Weber, respectively vice-president and president of the EPP, concerning their trips to Washington in December 2024 and December 2025, as no information has been published in their transparency registers at the European Parliament regarding their participation in these conferences organised by third parties and their meetings with officials from third countries.

On 10 February 2026, the Swedish journalist published a new article in Aftonbladet to revisit the lack of transparency surrounding these trips to Washington. Professor Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, director of the European Research Centre for Anti-Corruption and State-Building, concluded that “this is clearly a violation of ethical rules“, calling on journalists to address the issue in no uncertain terms: “The media should talk about it. Unfortunately, undue influence is becoming the norm among the new generation of politicians.”

Crisis management by the EPP and Jörgen Warborn

Following our revelations and the investigation by journalists from Aftonbladet and Der Spiegel, the EPP and Jörgen Warborn entered crisis management mode on 5 February. On 6 February 2026, Jörgen Warborn cancelled his participation in a press conference organised by the European Parliament, which included on its agenda an update on EU-US political relations.

In the days that followed, in order to avoid responding to the issues raised in our investigation, the EPP resorted to a tactic as old as time: creating a diversion and shooting the messenger by discrediting BLOOM and questioning our funding to journalists. This attack backfired, given that BLOOM’s accounts and funding sources are transparent, independent and beyond reproach, but it speaks volumes about the cold sweats of the European right since the release of our investigation.

At the same time, Jörgen Warborn and Dolors Montserrat attempted to quell the controversy and shield themselves from future awkward questions by belatedly and very partially addressing some of the shortcomings identified in our investigation:

• Amid the turmoil, Jörgen Warborn declared on his European Parliament webpage on 9 February 2026, after the 60-calendar-day deadline imposed by the European Parliament’s code of conduct, that his accommodation in Washington for three nights at the InterContinental Hotel had been funded by the International Democracy Union, and that he had participated in a panel discussion on “The High Cost of Control: How Excessive Regulation Suffocates Markets and Why It Must End“.
• On 7 February 2026, Dolors Montserrat posted a “short summary” of her trip to Washington on Instagram, in an attempt to portray transparency regarding her multiple meetings in Washington. While a meeting with Florida Republican Representative Mario Diaz-Balart and a meeting with Maduro regime opponent and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado had already been disclosed, many photos remain puzzling. Several meetings with representatives of US public authorities, including the State Department, mentioned in a video posted on Instagram on 6 December 2025, are not listed in her transparency register, as required by the European Parliament’s code of conduct.

 

Having been caught red-handed, Jörgen Warborn is now avoiding journalists and refusing to answer questions from Aftonbladet, seeing these revelations as a “politically motivated attempt to discredit (his) work“.

This statement omits criticism from some of Sweden’s most influential multinational companies.

Jörgen Warborn’s silence in the face of companies in favour of the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD)

In her article dated 10 February 2026, Swedish journalist Lisa Rostlund revealed that in June 2025, the Swedish branch of the Global Compact, the UN initiative for companies to implement the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), organised a conference bringing together “several MEPs and representatives of some of Sweden’s largest companies to discuss the Omnibus“.

Some of Sweden’s largest companies were present, including H&M, Ikea, Vattenfall, Volvo and Tetra Pak, which asked that due diligence not be challenged, considering it “a strategic opportunity rather than a burden“.

However, while Green, Socialist and Liberal MEPs took part in the meeting, the Swedish Global Compact Network said it had “no contact with the EPP, which unfortunately chose not to participate“. Thus, the party that has held numerous meetings with the fossil fuel industry and American industrial lobbies and championed the destruction of the CSDDD did not wish to participate in a conference and present its vision to Swedish multinationals in favour of ambitious legislation on due diligence.

This decision has fuelled speculation and raised questions, as Jörgen Warborn had previously defended a position on climate due diligence for large companies that is diametrically opposed to the one for which he now advocates.

Jörgen Warborn’s U-turn on climate policy

According to our European parliamentary activity monitoring platform iPolitics, Jörgen Warborn voted in favour of imposing climate transition plans on large companies in 2023. Before demolishing them in 2025:

• On 1 June 2023, Jörgen Warborn voted in favour of climate transition plans being imposed on large companies, as set out in amendments 68, 247/2, 394D and 402D, requiring companies’ business models and strategies to be aligned with limiting global warming to 1.5°C, in accordance with the Paris Agreement, and with the goal of carbon neutrality by 2050.
• On 13 June 2025, Jörgen Warborn proposed the removal of climate transition plans, tabled a series of identical amendments with the far-right ECR parliamentary group in early November to achieve this goal, and succeeded in having them removed in the disastrous vote on 13 November 2025.

 

What happened between these two dates?

The arguments put forward by European lobbies have remained unchanged for a decade.

What has changed is the balance of power in the European Parliament, with the European right and far right now forming an absolute majority should they decide to join forces, and, of course, Donald Trump’s return to power in 2024. From the beginning of his term, Trump launched a large-scale campaign of interference in the EU to torpedo due diligence, with the submission, a bill in the US Congress on 12 March 2025 aimed at “[prohibiting] entities integral to the national interests of the United States from participating in any foreign sustainability due diligence regulation, including the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive“.

Against a backdrop of high trade tensions, European leaders showed in the weeks that followed that they were unable to resist US demands. On 9 May 2025, during his first visit to Brussels, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz spoke out in favour of repealing the CSDDD and signing a trade agreement with the United States. Ten days later, French President Emmanuel Macron followed suit, announcing to an audience of investors that corporate sustainability due diligence should be “set aside” in order to “resynchronise” with the United States. In August 2025, Ursula von der Leyen, under pressure from the Trump administration, committed, following her meeting with Donald Trump in Scotland, to exempt American companies from compliance with the CSDDD…

This is the extent of Warborn’s reversal between 2023 and 2025: a surrender to the Trump administration, with the dismantling of European law in an attempt to appease an authoritarian leader who, across the Atlantic, is threatening the European Union with all kinds of trade retaliation, while quite openly announcing his intention to annex European territory and plant the American flag there.

Calls for an inquiry committee are growing

In this context, and following the launch of our petition calling for the opening of a committee of inquiry in the European Parliament, the French-speaking Greens delegation of the European Parliament voted on Sunday 8 February in favour of an inquiry committee.

Manon Aubry, co-chair of The Left group, asked on behalf of her group “that the links between MEPs and Trumpist organisations be fully investigated“.

On 12 February 2026, the French delegation of the Socialists and Democrats Group in the European Parliament called for “all political, legal and institutional means available to the European Parliament to be used to combat foreign interference by the United States” and simultaneously referred the matter to the Advisory Committee on the Conduct of Members “in order to shed light on possible breaches of the code of conduct for Members of the European Parliament.”

<<<SIGN OUR PETITION FOR AN INQUIRY COMMITTEE>>>

BLOOM is calling on all parliamentarians committed to defending European democratic sovereignty to join this appeal in order to enable the opening of an inquiry committee to shed light on US interference in the European Parliament.

This is a matter of urgency, as the conservative right has just appointed Aura Salla, former head of lobbying for Meta in Brussels, as rapporteur for the Omnibus Tech, with the overt aim of “cutting EU digital regulation“.