This is the warning Big Alcohol wants to keep off your bottles of beer

“There is a direct link between alcohol and fatal cancers.”

In what would’ve been a first for Europe, Ireland was set to introduce cigarette-style cancer warning labels on all alcoholic drinks from May 2026.

Every can of beer and all bottles of wine and spirits would have featured that stark warning, as well as a message that “drinking alcohol causes liver disease”.

But the label proposal put Ireland in Big Alcohol’s crosshairs – sparking a major and transatlantic lobbying campaign with significant implications for public health in the EU.

Following unprecedented backlash from the alcohol industry, the Irish plan was this year delayed until September 2028 – with the government citing concerns about the trade environment due to U.S. trade tariffs.

In a years-long lobbying offensive, the sector appealed to the European Commission and the U.S. government in a bid to pile pressure on Dublin and protect its bottom line, an investigation by The Investigative Desk and Follow the Money can reveal.

Read the whole article on Follow the Money EU (in English).

Read the whole article on Follow the Money (in Dutch).

Read the article on The Journal (in English).

Re-watch Radar here.

Interview with Irene van den Berg
Irene van den Berg is one of the investigative journalists who contributed to this series

What prompted you to start the research on the alcohol lobby?
Follow the Money asked The Investigative Desk to take on this project because we have experience investigating the food and tobacco industries. We had already seen how those lobbies can influence public health policy, often behind closed doors. The alcohol industry seemed to use similar tactics, but there had been much less reporting about it. That made us want to find out who was involved and how they worked to shape decisions that affect public health.

Why is this story important?
Alcohol causes serious health and social harm, yet many people – myself included – don’t always think about those risks. I enjoy a glass of wine and prefer not to be reminded that it increases my risk of cancer. If I saw that information more often, for example on a warning label, I might make different choices. This story is important because it shows why that kind of information is still missing, and how the alcohol industry tries to keep it that way. It’s not about judging people for drinking, but about making sure we can make informed choices.

When did you start this investigation?
We started in 2024, after Follow the Money invited us to do the research. From the beginning, the goal was to publish a series of stories, because FTM.eu believed the alcohol lobby didn’t get enough attention. They were right. The more we discovered, the clearer it became that this was a much bigger story. Our first article came out in 2025, and we’re still working on new parts of the investigation.

How did the international collaboration come about?
The alcohol lobby operates across borders, so we had to do the same. We saw the same companies and lobby groups active in Brussels, Dublin, and other capitals, often using the same arguments to delay or block health warnings on bottles. When Ireland announced plans for mandatory warning labels, it sparked a Europe-wide lobbying campaign. To understand how that worked, we teamed up with journalists in Belgium and Ireland who were following the same developments.

Is there a moment during the research that has stayed with you?
Yes. Reading internal documents that described how lobbyists planned to weaken or postpone public health measures really stuck with me. It’s one thing to suspect those strategies exist, but another to see them written down. That moment reminded me why it’s worth continuing this kind of research.