LONDON — The U.K government has published the first tranche of its long-awaited files relating to the appointment of former U.S. ambassador Peter Mandelson following the revelations about his association with the financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Mandelson was sacked as Britain’s top Washington diplomat in September last year, with further revelations prompting a police investigation into his conduct which led to his arrest last month. He has not been charged, and his lawyers have said he is cooperating with the investigation and his overriding priority is to clear his name. He has previously apologized “unequivocally” for his association with Epstein and “to the women and girls that suffered.” The files shed new light on how Mandelson was appointed to the role. POLITICO last month revealed serious concerns from current and former security officials about the process which appointed him. Here is what POLITICO has found in the files — so far. MANDELSON WANTED A PAYOUT OF MORE THAN £500K WHEN HE WAS SACKED Mandelson asked for a severance payment of more than £500,000 when he was sacked as Britain’s ambassador to Washington last September — he got £75,000. Internal Foreign Office emails show the ex-ambassador got £40,330 “in lieu of three months’ notice” — and a special severance payment of £34,670. He asked for a payout of the remainder of his full salary — £161,318 a year over the four-year term — which “would have amounted to £547,201.” Top Foreign Office official Olly Robbins described the final payout as “good value for money” in a message to Chief Secretary to the Treasury James Murray in October. STARMER’S COMMS CHIEF WAS ‘SATISFIED’ OVER EPSTEIN LINKS Keir Starmer’s former Director of Communications Matthew Doyle was said to be “satisfied” with Peter Mandelson’s responses when questioned about his contact with Jeffrey Epstein, the documents suggest. In a note sent to the prime minister on Dec. 11 2024, which included a copy of the due diligence review into Mandelson’s background, Keir Starmer was told his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney had also “discussed Peter’s relationship with Jeffery [sic] Epstein.” The note added: “But your Director of Communications is satisfied with his responses to questions about contact.” JONATHAN POWELL SAYS HE RAISED THE ALARM OVER THE ‘UNUSUAL’ APPOINTMENT PROCESS Starmer’s National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell claimed to have raised concerns about Mandelson directly with Starmer’s ex-chief of staff McSweeney — but was told they had been addressed. A freshly published document appears to show details of a fact-finding call between Keir Starmer’s General Counsel Mike Ostheimer and Powell about the appointment process which took place the day after Mandelson’s sacking. A summary of the discussion says that Powell, a veteran government adviser, found the process “unusual” and “weird rushed.” According to the document, Powell disclosed that he had raised concerns directly with the prime minister’s then-chief of staff McSweeney about the “individual and reputation,” but was told those issues had been “addressed.” This is a developing story and will be updated.

LONDON — The U.K. government is being urged to publish documents on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s appointment as a trade envoy. The opposition Liberal Democrats will put forward a motion in the U.K. parliament Tuesday requiring ministers to release files on the former prince’s appointment to the role in 2001, including those related to his vetting. The U.K. government favors the publication of documents on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s appointment as a trade envoy, a government minister said Tuesday, though it would have to be careful not to prejudice the ongoing investigation into the former prince. “Of course, the public have a right to see material that is relevant,” Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson told the BBC. A senior government official, granted anonymity because they are not authorized to speak on the record, indicated the government is unlikely to block the Lib Dem motion, which will be debated in the House of Commons later Tuesday. Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested last week on suspicion of misconduct in public office. He was released under investigation on the same day. The former prince has faced multiple allegations over his links to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including claims that he passed confidential documents to Epstein while he was serving as a British trade envoy between 2001 and 2011. He has strenuously and repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. He was stripped of his titles last year. The U.K. royal — brother of King Charles III — held the role of special representative for international trade and investment between 2001 and 2011 after being appointed by the Labour government at the time. The Liberal Democrat motion requests “all papers” relating to the creation of the role and Mountbatten-Windsor’s appointment to the role. It also requests documents relating to advice provided to the then-prime minister Tony Blair “regarding the suitability of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor for the appointment, due diligence and vetting conducted in relation to the appointment, and minutes of meetings and electronic communications regarding the due diligence and vetting.” It also asks for correspondence from Peter Mandelson, a former trade secretary, relating to the appointment to be released. The Telegraph newspaper last week reported Mandelson pushed for Mountbatten-Windsor’s appointment to the trade envoy role. Mandelson was arrested Monday on suspicion of misconduct in public office and subsequently released on bail pending further investigation. He has not commented on the police investigation, but has previously said he was wrong to have continued his association with Epstein, and apologized “unequivocally” to Epstein’s victims. Mandelson was appointed U.K. ambassador to Washington by Prime Minister Keir Starmer in December 2024 before being sacked in September 2025 after emails emerged showing he sent supportive messages to Epstein while the financier was facing charges for soliciting a minor in 2008. Phillipson indicated Tuesday that the government might not be able to release files on Mountbatten-Windsor if they prejudice the police investigation into the former prince. U.K. officials are already preparing to release a tranche of documents related to Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador. The opposition Conservatives successfully used a parliamentary motion to demand files on the vetting process for Mandelson’s appointment and contact with senior government figures. Ministers have similarly warned they will not be able to release files which might prejudice that ongoing police investigation. Sam Blewett contributed reporting

LONDON — “Her office was like something out of Black Mirror,” recalls a young official of her first trip to see the woman now leading Britain’s civil service. Wherever she looked in Antonia Romeo’s old sanctum at the Department for International Trade, Romeo’s face smiled back. “It was covered in pictures of her with famous people,” the footballer David Beckham among them, the official recalled. “I couldn’t concentrate on the meeting, because I was just looking at the wall thinking, ‘is that Imelda Staunton?’” If this kind of self-promotion sits awkwardly with Britain’s highly-strung reputation, it clashes violently with the stuffy etiquette of its civil service — where leaders are so notorious for self-restraint and false modesty that they were satirized in a TV drama called “Yes Minister.” Yet Romeo — who Prime Minister Keir Starmer named as the first ever female Cabinet secretary and head of Britain’s civil service on Thursday — is no ordinary civil servant. And that is exactly why Starmer wants her in the job. Now 51, she has been a state employee since her mid-20s, yet observers say she works more like a private sector CEO. A famed operator and prolific networker who has never hidden her ambition, she is seen as the opposite of Chris Wormald, who Starmer forced out with a bumper payoff last week after Labour aides complained he was a plodding functionary (a characterization rejected by his allies.) Her proposed appointment was met with a vicious briefing war in Whitehall. Bullying allegations resurfaced from her time as a diplomat in New York nine years ago (an investigation at the time found “no case to answer”), just as Starmer is accused of poor due diligence for other appointments. Former colleagues complain consistently about her self-regard, including claims that she asked staff to put framed Vogue and New Yorker articles about her in the Manhattan residence’s bathroom, and her all-guns-blazing approach to jolting the system into action. POLITICO spoke to 30 current and former politicians, political advisers and civil servants who have crossed paths with Romeo at all levels, most of whom requested anonymity to speak frankly. Several voiced discontent, while others vociferously defended her and dismissed the gripes about her (often from women) as misogyny. But even her staunchest critics acknowledge that Romeo has energy like almost no other civil servant and has a way of pushing Whitehall out of its comfort zone. Nearly a year after Starmer promised to “rewire” the state, his aides are now banking on her being the person to get it done. NOT YOUR USUAL CIVIL SERVANT In some ways, Romeo’s rise to the top looks conventional. Born in London, she studied at the fee-paying Westminster School followed by philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University. She was in the same year as Liz Truss, who went on to be Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister, and the veteran Conservative strategist Sheridan Westlake. Unlike most classmates, Romeo travelled in to school by Tube and would do homework in the lab where her mother, a biochemistry professor, worked full-time. Her parents kept her aware of the gender divide; while Romeo was a Brownie (Britain’s junior Girl Scouts), her father refused to let her gain the “house orderly” badge that involved sweeping and making tea. A fan of SoulCycle, skiing, game theory and (like Starmer) Arsenal football club, she had a brief stint in the management consultancy firm Oliver Wyman, where her husband John still works. She then joined the civil service in 2000 after seeing an advert in The Economist — her go-to publication — for an economist in the Lord Chancellor’s department. One of her early roles was as the private secretary for Labour peer Charles Falconer, who served as justice secretary in the mid-2000s. “It was a period of very difficult and massive constitutional and organizational reform,” he said. “She drove the reforms fearlessly, taking on every bit of the system to deliver … she took on No. 10 and the establishment of the civil service. “If it’s change you want, she is the person to have by your side. She’ll take the flak remorselessly. She gives you the right advice and she will 100 percent deliver. It is a total mystery that she wasn’t appointed 14 months ago.” There followed a steady rise through the ranks of government. She was mentored by the former Cabinet Secretary Jeremy Heywood, who she called an “inspiration” after his death in 2018, and landed the job of Britain’s consul general to New York in 2016 after she moved to the city with her family. Here, as a diplomat charged with promoting Britain overseas, Romeo began work on the sort of personal brand that would make most traditional civil servants shudder. She mingled with high society at parties hosted at the consul general’s residence in midtown Manhattan, where those invited or celebrated included Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour, fashion designer Stella McCartney and actor Joanna Lumley. One party hosted Rupert Murdoch and Theresa May in the room at the same time. One attendee recalled there being jokes about whether the media mogul was there to see Romeo or the prime minister. Another former official angrily recalled being unable to ascend the grand staircase of the Foreign Office in London one day because Romeo was posing for a photoshoot, including with Palmerston, the department’s cat. In 2017 Romeo won her first of three positions as a permanent secretary — leading a whole government department — at the Department for International Trade during the Brexit negotiations, briefly “commuting” (as some former colleagues put it) between London and New York. She later volunteered to pay back some travel expenses. Soon afterwards she was approached to guest edit the BBC’s flagship morning radio program, Today — an honor usually reserved for academics, business leaders and sports and music stars, including U2’s singer Bono and Yoko Ono. Romeo was personally keen to take part, said a person with knowledge of the request — but the government machine appears to have stepped in. Another person said: “There was a degree of consternation at the top of [Downing Street] that a civil servant would be putting themselves so directly in the limelight.” A third said: “No. 10 refused various requests for profiles or interview requests on her.”  (A government official contested this version of events, saying Romeo declined the request after it went through due process, rather than it being blocked by No. 10.) Romeo’s star continued to rise back in Whitehall, even if her public profile was dimmed. In Truss, her old uni contemporary who was the trade secretary, she had a match for directness and energy. One official recalled colleagues joking about Truss’s welcome photo with Romeo, where the new minister stood one step higher than her top civil servant. Romeo moved in 2021 to the top job at the Ministry of Justice, a department battling endless crises where a former colleague recalled her being effective — while (again) having an office with photos of herself with famous people. “She was quite overbearing on the comms teams for her personal comms,” the person added. “It’s not necessarily a criticism.” Another former official claimed she was “detested” by officials in the Treasury, with whom she had to negotiate difficult budgetary issues. Last year Romeo moved to head up the Home Office, perhaps the only department with more crises than justice, where she was appointed by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper. Her closest Labour ally, though, has been Shabana Mahmood — with whom Romeo shared a frank approach in the justice department and who replaced Cooper at the Home Office in September. It was not just the politicians who followed; the Home Office’s new chief operating officer, Jerome Glass, moved from the justice department last June.  But Romeo has still not been free of criticism from some colleagues.  One government official complained to POLITICO that Romeo’s office reported an X account that was posting baseless conspiracy theories about her to the Home Office monitoring unit — which is more commonly used to track hostile social media sentiment that could lead to protests or extremism. BULLYING CLAIMS  The trickiest choice for Starmer — who appointed two men, former U.S. Ambassador Peter Mandelson and his former Director of Communications Matthew Doyle, despite knowing of their friendships with pedophiles — was how to navigate bullying claims against Romeo during her time in New York, which resurfaced in media reports this week. The Cabinet Office has repeatedly insisted there was only one formal complaint against Romeo during that period, and an investigation concluded there was “no case to answer.”  However, three people with knowledge of the process told POLITICO that more than 10 civil servants raised concerns about Romeo’s behaviour or conduct during her time in New York, some of which were drawn upon in the single formal complaint. Two of the people said that some staff did not enter standalone formal complaints because they could not be guaranteed that their identities would be kept from senior staff, including Romeo, as part of a process designed to prevent spurious accusations. Romeo was investigated by Tim Hitchens, the former ambassador to Japan, as part of a wider process ultimately decided on by the Cabinet Office in London. “It was essentially brushed under the carpet by the Cabinet Office, saying, ‘this is our business, not yours. Get lost,’” one of the three people said. (A government official disputed this, saying that as Romeo was on secondment, only the Cabinet Office could preside over an investigation.) A Cabinet Office spokesperson told POLITICO: “As we have repeatedly said, these claims were raised nine years ago and were thoroughly investigated. The allegations were dismissed on the basis that there was no case to answer. “Ahead of Dame Antonia’s appointment as Cabinet Secretary, a comprehensive due diligence process took place.” Government officials also point out that Romeo has held three permanent secretary roles in nine years without complaints, and that she was previously approved for the Cabinet secretary shortlist in 2024. SUPPORTERS POINT TO SEXISM And Romeo’s supporters see a successful civil servant whose critics’ petty gripes amount to sexism. She is a member of the Athenæum, a private member’s club on London’s Pall Mall which only began admitting female members in 2002. Plenty in Whitehall have long considered its own club of top officials to be pale, male and stale. Some male ministers have had plenty of photos of themselves in their offices, without being remarked on publicly. Dave Penman, the general secretary of the FDA union for senior civil servants, said that while Romeo courts publicity, she is also ambitious, dynamic and inspirational. “There are a lot of traits in women leaders that are deemed as negative, that in men are considered good,” he said. “She gets a lot of shit that a lot of other civil servants don’t get.” Penman pointed to a 2023 report about former Justice Secretary Dominic Raab, who resigned following a bullying inquiry. It found that Romeo — as his department’s top civil servant — told Raab directly that there had been complaints about his behavior. (Raab said at the time that the inquiry “set a dangerous precedent” by “setting the threshold for bullying so low.”) Penman added: “She does not get the credit she deserves as the only permanent secretary who stood up to Raab.” Others in government during this time had a more nuanced recollection. One former official recalled that Romeo told civil servants not to refuse Raab’s requests. Another said: “I got the impression that she was trying to prove to the department that she was saying the stuff to Dom that they wanted her to say, but I don’t think she was a full agent of the department in that sense. She was trying to balance differing perspectives.” Keeping warring groups at bay like this is an essential part of the job of a permanent secretary, but it has also allowed conflicting myths about Romeo to run unchallenged. While some on the right have dubbed her the “queen of woke” for supporting diversity initiatives, one former colleague recalled that when the Ministry of Justice pulled out of a scheme run by the LGBTQ+ rights charity Stonewall, “Antonia to her credit didn’t complain, didn’t grumble. She just made it happen, and dealt with quite a bit of internal flak for it.” One official who worked with Romeo at the trade department described her as a “very political civil servant,” in a good way. When U.S. President Donald Trump imposed a series of tariffs including on whisky and shortbread, “she got that that was a problem and the first port of call was to get all the whisky and shortbread people in for a round table,” they said. “She just moved very quickly and ran with it where other permanent secretaries might have been too high and mighty to do the work.” Conservative Brandon Lewis, who served as justice secretary before Raab, said Romeo’s “focus and motivation” helped end a barristers’ strike and praised her as a “real leader.”  ‘DOES KEIR STARMER NEED A PAPER PUSHER? NO HE FUCKING DOESN’T’ Romeo’s supporters — and some of her critics — say her personality is exactly the reason Starmer needs her in the job. While political officials have a mixed opinion on Romeo, many are vicious about her predecessors for the opposite reasons.  Before he was sacked, one former Labour official complained Wormald was “truly abysmal” at driving change. When Simon McDonald, the former head of the diplomatic service, gave an interview to Channel 4 News warning Starmer off appointing Romeo, one former Tory official fumed: “Fuck me … How fucking cheap.” One Whitehall figure said of Romeo: “She’s got an ego. She loves publicity. That doesn’t make her bad at her job — and that’s the key element.  “There’s are lots of fucking boring personality types that couldn’t inspire and lead anyone. People are prosecuting her personality rather than how she does in the job.” Six former Cabinet secretaries — including Gus O’Donnell, whose nickname on Whitehall is “God” — issued a joint statement on Thursday night praising Romeo as an “excellent choice” for the role. “Dame Antonia’s track record shows she is very well placed to deliver the necessary changes,” they said. “As ever, the extremes are bullshit,” added a former government official. “I think she’s a serious person and very intelligent. She’s not going to save the world single handedly — nobody should — but the negative is very overdone.” Another former government official said: “She’s incredibly effective, thrusting, dynamic. Do I think she’s bent various rules in the past? Yes. Is she very egotistical and has a deep regard for her self-image? Yes. But bending rules and pushing things to the maximum is part of what makes her good. She’s not pale, male and stale like permanent secretaries we’re used to.” Other current and former officials are less effusive, pointing to other dynamic female permanent secretaries such as Sarah Healey, who leads the housing department without the same notoriety, and to government policies that have gone wrong during Romeo’s tenure.  While one former official praised her for knowing “a shit civil servant from a good one,” a current official said: “She has a reputation for firing people, which is great for Keir wanting to revamp the civil service, but you also have to lead. You have to come up with ideas.” Other officials warn that her greatest challenge may be convincing civil servants to back her approach — a task at which many of her predecessors have failed. One former senior government official perhaps summed it up best with the words: “I’ve never liked her, but I have to admire her.”  They added: “For all the women saying she’s no sister, actually I’ve kind of got an admiration for her … Does Keir Starmer need a paper pusher right now? No he fucking doesn’t.” One phrase was the most telling from Starmer as he welcomed Romeo to the job. The prime minister called her “the right person to drive the government to reform.” Downing Street officials are looking more broadly at how the role of Cabinet secretary works within the system, including studying work on reform by the Institute for Government, two people with knowledge of the conversations told POLITICO. A third person said Darren Jones, chief secretary to the prime minister, has been inviting senior civil servants who can provide examples of where they’ve jumpstarted the system to give presentations to a committee of Cabinet ministers. “She’s going to be in quite a strong position,” one supporter of Romeo said, “not quite unsackable, but in a position to dictate and have ideas.” She may soon find that a necessity.

LONDON — Keir Starmer’s ill-fated decision to pick Peter Mandelson as Britain’s ambassador to the U.S. — despite known links to Jeffrey Epstein — has thrown his government into turmoil. And it’s prompting intense scrutiny of a system designed to stop precisely that outcome. As the U.K. prime minister faces continued blowback for appointing Mandelson to the diplomatic post, POLITICO spoke to seven national security experts, current and former officials and MPs familiar with the security vetting system that governs sensitive roles. They say the Mandelson case — in which the veteran politician was given the job despite his ties to late convicted sex offender Epstein — highlights a slew of long-running problems with a set-up meant to ensure candidates for key posts are free from the kind of risks that have now blown up in Starmer’s face. In reality, they say, the process suffers from political pressure, a lack of robust due diligence, a reliance on trust, and stretched resources. Some were granted anonymity to speak candidly about this sensitive issue.  A security official who has undergone the same process as Mandelson — known as Developed Vetting (DV) — said: “If the process was done properly — and he still passed — then everyone who has been through DV needs re-vetting. Because, if Mandelson can pass, anyone can.” For his part, Mandelson — who did not respond to a request for comment for this piece — has said he “deeply regrets” his continued association with Epstein and the “lies” that the “monster” told him. He has said none of the Epstein emails released by the U.S. Department of Justice “indicate wrongdoing or misdemeanor on my part.” He has apologized “unequivocally” for his association with Epstein and “to the women and girls that suffered.” A QUESTION OF TIMING A full DV check is supposed to be a grueling affair, gatekeeping the most senior and sensitive Whitehall jobs. Candidates must actively declare any potential security risks they are aware of. They are routinely subjected to a deeply-personal interview on every aspect of their life, including those which could potentially make them a blackmail target.  Self-declaration forms are filled in, candidates are interviewed, and referees are quizzed to cross-examine the information provided. DV covers everything from a candidate’s foreign travel to their pornography habits. It presses them on any drug taking or affairs, and can probe their entire financial history. Criminal records must be declared and are scrutinized. “The process requires a vast amount of information, including a full travel history, where you’ve been and with whom, and any foreign associates,” the security official quoted at the beginning of this piece said. “It’s intrusive by design. Any normal person would feel uncomfortable, let alone someone with a history.” DV is carried out by United Kingdom Security Vetting (UKSV), a body in the Cabinet Office. The questions it asks and the information it collects are confidential and shared only with UKSV and the Foreign Office’s own security team. The prime minister does not have access to its findings. A full DV check is supposed to be a grueling affair, gatekeeping the most senior and sensitive Whitehall jobs. | Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images But Mandelson’s appointment has raised questions over both the sequencing and scope of this vetting. The pick for the U.S. ambassador job was announced to much fanfare in December 2024 — before DV had taken place.  Ahead of the announcement, No.10 Downing Street instead asked the Cabinet Office’s internal Proprietary and Ethics Team (PET) to run a more limited “due diligence” check on the ambassadorial choice, alongside five other candidates then under consideration by the government.  The vast majority of the information the Cabinet Office relied on for the exercise was in the public domain. A summary was then handed to Downing Street, who proceeded with the appointment, after No.10 chief of staff Morgan McSweeney emailed three further questions to Mandelson on his relationship with Epstein. Only then did developed vetting begin. Matthew Savill had a long career working in Whitehall and vetting before joining the RUSI security think tank — and is among those raising alarm bells about the sequencing of this process in Mandelson’s case.  “There is a huge question over how Mandelson was appointed and publicly announced before vetting,” he said. “There is no way that that doesn’t slightly tip the balance towards acceptance. If you’re going to hold up the appointment or deny them the clearance, it becomes an issue.”  At the time Mandelson was announced for the job, the fact of his association with Epstein was public knowledge — although the full extent of his longer-term ties to the disgraced financier had yet to be made public in the U.S. Department of Justice’s release of the Epstein Files. “None of us knew the depths and the darkness of that relationship,” Starmer said earlier this month in a speech apologizing to Epstein’s victims for appointing Mandelson. The pick for the U.S. ambassador job was announced to much fanfare in December 2024 — before DV had taken place. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images Emily Thornberry, chair of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, grilled Foreign Office boss Olly Robbins about the process last November, weeks after Mandelson had been fired as ambassador over the publication of correspondence between him and Epstein.  Robbins acknowledged that Mandelson — a veteran Labour politician who had held multiple government posts under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown — had “jumped the queue” for vetting, with a process done “faster than some people’s clearances will have been.” But he said: “That was not because the process was different; it was because we advanced him up the queue.” Robbins — who was Mandelson’s line manager — told the committee that he had a conversation with Mandelson about his “conflicts of interests” during the process, and the contents of that “needs to be between us.” Thornberry remains unconvinced that enough time was granted to allow full developed vetting to take place — and fears political timescales were at play. “It all had to be sorted out and tickety-boo by the swearing in with the president [Trump] at the beginning of January,” she tells POLITICO. “So there was very little time — and there was Christmas in between. Normally, as I understand it, DV takes months. Keir Starmer’s ill-fated decision to pick Peter Mandelson as Britain’s ambassador to the U.S. has thrown his government into turmoil. | Zeynep Demir/Anadolu via Getty Images “What we did get out of our inquiry was that he wasn’t given a panel interview the way that a non-political appointee would do, and so therefore any questions asked of him seem to have been done pretty informally by [Starmer’s then-Chief of Staff] Morgan McSweeney — which is pretty low-level accountability.” The Cabinet Office declined to comment on the record for this piece. TOOLS FOR THE JOB Others are questioning whether the DV process is robust enough to account for a candidate who may give misleading answers.  Starmer has accused Mandelson of lying to him “repeatedly” about the extent of his ties to Epstein — and that, say those familiar with the vetting process, shows one of its fundamental weaknesses: a reliance on trust over hard information. One former government special advisor who has been through DV said that the interview they faced was “like going to the GP and they ask how many units [of alcohol per week] you have. Nobody fully tells the truth, and I guess they can only go by what you provide them with, unless they can get good data.” In contrast with some U.S. counterparts, British officials remain wary of leaning on polygraph tests to weigh the veracity of answers given in interviews. Instead, the DV process relies on the strength of the intelligence that feeds into it — and the honesty of the person subject to the checks. “There is no lie detector — which the U.K. has been pretty skeptical about in comparison to the U.S. which uses them a lot. If you lie and there’s something that only you know about, which your references don’t, then you might get through vetting,” Savill said. There is only a limited role in the process for Britain’s Intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6.  There is only a limited role in the process for Britain’s Intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6. | Mike Kemp/In Pictures Ltd./Corbis via Getty Images Savill said there are two places where spooks might feed into vetting: a “box check,” in which UKSV runs a candidate and their family’s details against security service records, “to see if they turn up in some capacity;” and during the due diligence check by the Proprietary and Ethics Team (PET) in the Cabinet Office. “This is a point at which you might consult the agencies in the background,” Savill said. Political party whips can also feed into this process.  But, he warned, “questions around political figures that have national security implications are radioactive in the intelligence community.” Britain’s Wilson Doctrine — the convention that MPs’ and Lords’ communications should not be intercepted by the intelligence services — continues to place “pretty significant constraints on how intelligence and politics interact.” PET did not consult the security services during its due diligence process for Mandelson. The Cabinet Office declined to comment on security matters relating to Mandelson’s appointment or any engagement with the intelligence community. There is also some consternation among security experts that Mandelson’s known Russian connections were not viewed as a sufficient risk to stop his clearance. The former Labour politician had a long-standing relationship with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. “I know people who haven’t even gotten their parliamentary clearance because they’ve travelled to Russia once for work, or they’ve had a parent who’s been born in that region but has no links there whatsoever,” the former special advisor quoted above said. “That’s the level of paranoia there is, and about Russia in particular.” Carve-outs for areas of acute sensitivity are possible under the vetting process. Mandelson’s clearance would likely have seen him inducted into STRAP, a high-level, U.K. security clearance allowing access to top-level intelligence material. Obtaining this clearance involves looking at the foreign exposure of an individual — and can result in a subject being denied access to certain pieces of intelligence if deemed a risk. The former Labour politician had a long-standing relationship with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. | Getty Images Savill noted that given that the U.S.-U.K. relationship is “so key,” its ambassador is expected to have access to a vast swathe of intelligence and “it would be really difficult to do his job without this.” ‘FAILED TO GET A GRIP’ UKSV itself continues to feel political heat over its performance — and major questions about the resourcing of DV checks persist.  Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee reported in 2023 that ministers had repeatedly complained to UKSV over delays in granting clearances. “The Cabinet Office has failed to get a grip of vetting services since it took over responsibility in 2020,” the watchdog said. “It has not assessed the impact across government that delays to vetting can have when staff are unable to progress work because they do not have the appropriate level of security clearance.” Savill argues that “national security vetting has largely been a car crash for the past decade.” He cites a combination of short-staffing, botched IT upgrades and a lack of capacity for what can be expensive and intrusive work into people’s backgrounds. “It raises the question if DV is fit for the modern era for people who are attempting to evade scrutiny,” Savill added.   At the same time, Savill said there can be quite “a high bar to get over when denying a DV” clearance to a candidate, which leads to emphasis on what’s known as “aftercare” — regular checks on a person’s circumstances to keep an eye on issues identified during vetting. “There has been criticism that DV lets a lot of people through the gate and then it puts a lot of emphasis on checking up on them afterwards,” he said. “The problem is the presumption is towards giving a DV — it is a bit like a trial, the presumption is towards innocence.” SHAKE-UP STARTS Earlier this month, the British government folded to political pressure and agreed to release vast swathes of internal documentation relating to Mandelson’s appointment — but the work to overhaul vetting is only just beginning. Emily Thornberry, chair of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, grilled Foreign Office boss Olly Robbins about the process last November, weeks after Mandelson had been fired as ambassador. | Nicola Tree/Getty Images Starmer’s administration has promised to publish Mandelson’s due diligence report, a conflict of interest form he had to fill out, and information provided to UKSV by the Foreign Office. But it is unlikely that the information contained in Mandelson’s DV process will ever see the light of day. Further documents deemed to be “prejudicial to U.K. national security or international relations” will be referred to Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), while an ongoing police investigation into misconduct in public office allegations against Mandelson — who appears to have forwarded on government policy advice to Epstein while serving in Gordon Brown’s government — leaves some elements in limbo. Officers have not yet interviewed Mandelson and he has denied wrongdoing. In a bid to get back on the front foot after days of damaging headlines, the government has signaled that it’s open to a shake-up of vetting. Morgan McSweeney — Starmer’s chief of staff, who was forced to resign over the scandal — called for the process to be “fundamentally overhauled” in his parting statement.  Darren Jones, the minister who leads the Cabinet Office, vowed last week that the government would tighten the process for appointments like Mandelson’s. It will, Jones said, include assurances that “where the role requires access to highly classified material, the selected candidate must have passed through the requisite national security vetting process before such appointments are announced or confirmed.” “This cannot simply be a gesture but a safeguard for the future,” he said. In the meantime, the questions about this particular appointment — and how seriously the vetting process was taken by the politicians calling the shots — continue to mount. “What is extraordinary is that I cannot see how a vetting team could have given him a positive outcome of that process,” a former senior British security official said of Mandelson’s appointment:   “Whatever Starmer and [former No.10 chief of staff Morgan] McSweeney think of him and his abilities — that’s not the issue. The issue is whether you lack integrity and/or are a security risk.”

LONDON — Police have asked the U.K. government to hold back from publishing a key exchange in which Downing Street asked Peter Mandelson about his links to Jeffrey Epstein, two people familiar with the discussions told POLITICO. No. 10’s then-chief of staff Morgan McSweeney emailed Mandelson asking three questions about his ties to the convicted sex offender, before Mandelson was appointed as Britain’s ambassador to the U.S. in December 2024. The emails on behalf of Prime Minister Keir Starmer were first reported by the BBC last September and included why Mandelson continued contact with Epstein after the sex offender’s 2008 conviction, as well as why he was reported to have stayed in one of Epstein’s homes while the financier was in prison. That exchange is one of a handful of documents relating to Mandelson’s appointment that the Metropolitan Police have asked the government not to publish at this time to avoid undermining a separate criminal investigation into Mandelson, said the two people referenced above. Both requested anonymity to discuss internal matters. While the criminal investigation is separate to the cache of vetting documents and private messages from 2024 and 2025 that are awaiting release, Mandelson was asked about his past as part of his appointment process. Met Police Commander Ella Marriott said on Dec. 4 that the force had asked the government “not to release certain documents at this time.” A Met Police spokesperson declined to confirm specifics when approach for comment by POLITICO but said the force was “focused on a timely and thorough process.” This person added: “An investigation into alleged misconduct in public office is under way and it is vital due process is followed so that our criminal investigation and any potential prosecution is not compromised. “As part of our enquiries, we will review material identified and provided to us by the Cabinet Office to assess whether publication is likely to have a detrimental impact on our investigation or any subsequent prosecution. We will work alongside the Cabinet Office to review relevant documents over the weeks ahead. The process to decide which documents should ultimately be published remains a matter for government and parliament.” A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “We do not comment on police investigations.” Starmer has said Mandelson “repeatedly lied” to No. 10 about the extent of his friendship with Epstein — but the paper trail that would show what Downing Street knew, and when, remains caught in a tussle between police and the government. The prime minister has faced questions about his judgment in giving Mandelson the plum role, despite knowing he had continued his friendship with Epstein after his conviction, and has pledged transparency over the decision — which will be complicated by efforts to hold back key exchanges. The scandal has already cost the job of McSweeney, one of Starmer’s most senior allies, after he pushed for Mandelson’s appointment. Keir Starmer has said Mandelson “repeatedly lied” to No. 10 about the extent of his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. | Carl Court/Getty Images MPs voted earlier this month to release documents relating to Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador, as well as a much wider cache of emails and text messages between Mandelson and ministers and political advisers in the ruling Labour Party. While the total cache amounts to tens of thousands of documents, the two people mentioned above said the process is currently prioritizing the much smaller number of files that relate directly to Mandelson’s appointment. Of those files relating to his appointment, the Met Police have asked for a smaller subset to be held back while its investigation into Mandelson is under way, one of the two people said.  The exchange with McSweeney was part of a wider vetting that Mandelson went through as part of his appointment. He was also subject to due diligence by the Cabinet Office, followed by deep security vetting after his posting had been announced. The Metropolitan Police are investigating whether Mandelson committed misconduct in public office after a 2009 email exchange, released in the Epstein files, appeared to show him forwarding the details of government financial discussions to Epstein. Officers have not yet interviewed Mandelson and he has denied wrongdoing.

LONDON — For Keir Starmer, the crises and climbdowns just keep getting faster. The British prime minister, facing questions about his judgment in appointing Peter Mandelson as U.K. ambassador to Washington despite his Jeffrey Epstein links, pledged on Wednesday to publish a cache of emails and texts between the ex-Labour peer and his top team — on his own terms. But hours later he was forced to toughen up independent scrutiny of this document release in the face of a revolt by his own MPs, who are horrified by the scandal and fear opposition accusations of a cover-up will stick. Taken alone, this technical U-turn will not enter any history books. But the last-minute drama around it puts the already weak Labour leader in further peril. Nervous MPs in his governing party, now awaiting the document dump with deep unease, are rounding with renewed ferocity on the PM and his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney. POLITICO spoke to 20 Labour MPs and current and former officials for this piece. “We need a head,” said one moderate Labour MP who entered parliament in 2024 and was, like others quoted, granted anonymity to speak frankly. “Someone has to pay the price for this failure,” a second, usually loyal, MP from the 2024 intake said, adding they “wouldn’t care” who exactly it was. In the minds of many of Labour’s own MPs and officials, the Mandelson affair has further weakened Starmer and McSweeney, who pushed for the appointment of his close ally and friend as ambassador in late 2024. After rows over a succession of tax and policy U-turns, some believe the Mandelson crisis exemplifies their criticisms of Starmer’s leadership — paying too little attention to a potential problem until it blows up into a full-blown scandal. “I love Morgan, but Keir has to sack him and he should have sacked him a long time ago,” said one Labour official who has long been loyal to the leadership. “The problem is, who does Keir replace him with?” TAINTED BY MANDELSON Starmer defended McSweeney to the hilt on Wednesday. “Morgan McSweeney is an essential part of my team,” he told MPs. “He helped me change the Labour Party and win an election. Of course I have confidence in him,” the PM said. Some MPs also rallied around Starmer, blaming an overexcited media narrative and MPs on edge for the next scandal. “This feels like a Westminster story at the moment rather than something terminal for the PM in the eyes of the public,” said a third Labour MP elected in 2024. But the mood in large parts of the party on Wednesday night was bleak. The latest round of bloodletting began in earnest on Monday, when emails released as part of the Epstein files appeared to show Mandelson leaking government financial discussions in the wake of the 2008 banking crash. Police are now investigating allegations of misconduct in public office. Mandelson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the police investigation Tuesday evening. He has previously said he was wrong to have continued his association with Epstein and apologized “unequivocally” to Epstein’s victims. Starmer, like the rest of the British state and public, insists he did not know about the bombshell emails, and would never have appointed Mandelson if he did. Having already sacked Mandelson in September he is now obliterating his reputation, saying on Wednesday that Mandelson “lied repeatedly” during his appointment as ambassador.  Yet it was well known that Mandelson came with baggage. Starmer knew the former Labour Cabinet minister had been repeatedly sacked in scandal — and confirmed at the weekly Prime Minister’s Questions session on Wednesday that he had known Mandelson was friends with Epstein. “That was the moment,” said a fourth, moderate Labour MP. “The mood was awful. I had opposition MPs saying to me that they had not seen one that bad in decades.” Several Labour MPs and officials who spoke to POLITICO voiced fears that revealing details of the vetting process will paint Starmer and his chief of staff as too incurious about the wider situation. Mandelson had worked closely with McSweeney since the late 2010s and gave Labour informal advice in the run-up to its 2024 election landslide. One former No. 10 official said Mandelson was not on the list of potential ambassadors until McSweeney took over as chief of staff in October 2024, claiming: “Morgan didn’t do anything without speaking to Peter.” “Once the timeline — and the degree to which searching questions were asked — become clear, I think Morgan might be in trouble,” one U.K. government official added. Mandelson went through at least three layers of checks, a second U.K. government official said. Before his role was announced, the Cabinet Office carried out due diligence. Afterward, he was subjected to full deep security vetting. The third layer — and potentially the most problematic for Starmer and McSweeney — was a letter to Mandelson before his appointment from the chief of staff on the PM’s behalf. It asked three questions: why he continued contact with Epstein after his conviction, why he was reported to have stayed in one of Epstein’s home when the financier was in prison, and whether he was associated with a charity founded by Epstein’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell. A No. 10 official said reports that linked Mandelson to Epstein, including after he was first convicted, had been looked into as part of the appointment process. “Peter Mandelson lied to the Prime Minister, hid information that has since come to light and presented Epstein as someone he barely knew,” the No. 10 official added. HURRY UP AND WAIT Some Labour MPs — spooked by consistent polls putting Labour behind Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK — are so angry that they want to see regime change immediately. For many on Labour’s left or “soft left” flank this was simply a chance to push their campaign against No. 10. One former minister, already hostile to the leadership, said it felt like the worst part of Starmer’s premiership and McSweeney should go now. Left-wing former Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, long cast out of the party over comments on antisemitism, went on Sky News to say Starmer may even be challenged before local elections, which will be held across the U.K. in May. Others were new converts to immediate action. A fifth Labour MP, a moderate who entered parliament in 2024, also said McSweeney should go now. They lamented the “blind spot for many in the leadership” who allowed Mandelson to become ambassador. It has left some MPs angry and dejected. One, Sarah Owen, made an impassioned intervention in Wednesday’s debate: “Don’t we need to put the victims at the heart of this, not just ourselves?” But they will have to wait if they want the facts behind the case to become clear. MPs agreed on Wednesday night to release a series of documents concerning the diligence and vetting around Mandelson’s appointment, as well as communications he had with McSweeney, ministers, civil servants and special advisers in the six months before his appointment. Starmer had intended to block the release of any documents that would prejudice U.K. national security or international relations. But No. 10 staged a late climbdown after Angela Rayner — a key figure among MPs on Labour’s “soft left” who resigned as deputy prime minister amid a housing scandal in September — called for parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) to have a role. Officials scrambled to compile a new amendment that would give the ISC the final say on what is blocked. It will likely take days or weeks for the government to work through what needs to be released, and far longer for the ISC to work through the most contentious documents after that. The Met Police also released a statement on Wednesday night warning the release of specific documents “could undermine” its current investigation into Mandelson’s alleged misconduct in public office. The releases — which could include Mandelson’s private messages to friends in the Cabinet, such as Health Secretary Wes Streeting — will provide easy fodder to a British media gripped by the stories of Epstein’s friendships with Mandelson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew. But most MPs and officials who spoke to POLITICO agreed that No. 10 and McSweeney stand to lose the most. A second former No. 10 official said: “Lots of people are nice to creepy people in politics. But when it comes down to the brass tacks of who knew what or did what when they made the appointment — that’s the chopping block stuff.” A sixth Labour MP, on the left of the party, said even frontbenchers were “questioning why they should jeopardise their own positions to protect one individual [McSweeney].” But the question of “when” remains a key one.  One Labour figure loyal to Starmer’s No. 10 admitted there will be pressure for McSweeney to go now, but insisted anyone with an ounce of political sense would delay any move against him until after local elections in May — so that he could absorb the blame for any losses and protect the PM. Even a staunch ally of McSweeney — who has been at Starmer’s side since he first ran to be Labour leader — said they had no idea if he will survive. But a seventh Labour MP, elected in 2024, thinks questions over McSweeney’s future are a red herring. “It’s ultimately about the PM’s judgement,” they said. The fourth Labour MP quoted above added: “If one of them goes, the other one has to go too.” Esther Webber contributed reporting.

LONDON — Keir Starmer will strive for “maximum transparency” when releasing files on Peter Mandelson’s appointment as British ambassador to the U.S., a senior U.K. minister said Wednesday. Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the prime minister wants to release as much information into the public domain about how Mandelson was appointed, his correspondence with ministers and his subsequent sacking last September over the former Labour peer’s friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. “The prime minister’s going for maximum transparency here,” Streeting, a former friend of Mandelson, told Sky, though added the PM is “obviously drawing a line” by “not releasing information where it might compromise our national security and our security services, or where there may be information in there that might undermine international relations with other countries.” The opposition Conservatives have put forward a humble address — a parliamentary message to King Charles that was favored by Starmer during his time as leader of the opposition — calling for “all papers” relating to Mandelson’s appointment last year to be published. These include “due diligence which was passed to Number 10,” conflict of interest forms over his work in Russia and China, and correspondence (including electronic communications) between Mandelson, ministers and the PM’s Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney — who encouraged Starmer to send the then Labour peer to Washington. The government has published an amendment to the address accepting the Tories’ request, with the caveat that it will exclude “papers prejudicial to U.K. national security or international relations.” U.K. lawmakers will debate the substance of what should be released this afternoon. “What we’ve seen in recent days also is a prime minister acting rapidly to make sure that Peter Mandelson is stripped of all of the titles and privileges that were conferred on him through public service,” Streeting told the BBC, calling his behavior “so jaw-droppingly stupid and outrageous.” The Metropolitan Police confirmed Tuesday evening that Mandelson is under investigation for alleged misconduct in public office after it appeared he leaked sensitive government discussions at the height of the financial crisis to the late financier. Mandelson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the investigation on Tuesday evening. He has previously said he was wrong to have continued his association with Epstein and apologized “unequivocally” to Epstein’s victims. And in a Times Newspaper interview that was conducted before the most recent batch of Epstein files were released, Mandelson attempted to explain his historic association with the disgraced financier. “I don’t know what his motives were — probably mixed — but he provided guidance to help me navigate out of the world of politics and into the world of commerce and finance,” Mandelson told the newspaper. Mandelson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the investigation on Tuesday evening. Mandelson also resigned from the House of Lords and left Labour following the latest tranche of correspondence in the Epstein Files.

BRUSSELS — More than 80 percent of Europe’s companies will be freed from environmental-reporting obligations after EU institutions reached a deal on a proposal to cut green rules on Monday.   The deal is a major legislative victory for European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in her push cut red tape for business, one of the defining missions of her second term in office. However, that victory came at a political cost: The file pushed the coalition that got her re-elected to the brink of collapse and led her own political family, the center-right European People’s Party (EPP), to team up with the far right to get the deal over the line. The new law, the first of many so-called omnibus simplification bills, will massively reduce the scope of corporate sustainability disclosure rules introduced in the last political term. The aim of the red tape cuts is to boost the competitiveness of European businesses and drive economic growth. The deal concludes a year of intense negotiations between EU decision-makers, investors, businesses and civil society, who argued over how much to reduce reporting obligations for companies on the environmental impacts of their business and supply chains — all while the effects of climate change in Europe were getting worse. “This is an important step towards our common goal to create a more favourable business environment to help our companies grow and innovate,” said Marie Bjerre, Danish minister for European affairs. Denmark, which holds the presidency of the Council of the EU until the end of the year, led the negotiations on behalf of EU governments. Marie Bjerre, Den|mark’s Minister for European affairs, who said the agreement was an important step for a more favourable business environment. | Philipp von Ditfurth/picture alliance via Getty Images Proposed by the Commission last February, the omnibus is designed to address businesses’ concerns that the paperwork needed to comply with EU laws is costly and unfair. Many companies have been blaming Europe’s overzealous green lawmaking and the restrictions it places on doing business in the region for low economic growth and job losses, preventing them from competing with U.S. and Chinese rivals.   But Green and civil society groups — and some businesses too — argued this backtracking would put environmental and human health at risk. That disagreement reverberated through Brussels, disturbing the balance of power in Parliament as the EPP broke the so-called cordon sanitaire — an unwritten rule that forbids mainstream parties from collaborating with the far right — to pass major cuts to green rules. It set a precedent for future lawmaking in Europe as the bloc grapples with the at-times conflicting priorities of boosting economic growth and advancing on its green transition. The word “omnibus” has since become a mainstay of the Brussels bubble vernacular with the Commission putting forward at least 10 more simplification bills on topics like data protection, finance, chemical use, agriculture and defense. LESS PAPERWORK   The deal struck by negotiators from the European Parliament, EU Council and the Commission includes changes to two key pieces of legislation in the EU’s arsenal of green rules: The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD).  The rules originally required businesses large and small to collect and publish data on their greenhouse gas emissions, how much water they use, the impact of rising temperatures on working conditions, chemical leakages and whether their suppliers — which are often spread across the globe — respect human rights and labor laws.    Now the reporting rules will only apply to companies with more than 1,000 employees and €450 million in net turnover, while only the largest companies — with 5,000 employees and at least €1.5 billion in net turnover — are covered by supply chain due diligence obligations. They also don’t have to adopt transition plans, with details on how they intend to adapt their business model to reach targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.   Importantly the decision-makers got rid of an EU-level legal framework that allowed civilians to hold businesses accountable for the impact of their supply chains on human rights or local ecosystems. MEPs have another say on whether the deal goes through or not, with a final vote on the file slated for Dec. 16. It means that lawmakers have a chance to reject what the co-legislators have agreed to if they consider it to be too far from their original position.

The EU is adding Russia to its blacklist of countries at high risk of money laundering and financing terrorism, according to two EU officials and a document seen by POLITICO. The global watchdog Financial Action Task Force (FATF) suspended Russia as a member after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but failed to blacklist it, despite evidence presented by the Ukrainian government, because of opposition from countries in the BRICS group of emerging economies, which includes Brazil, India, China, and South Africa. EU lawmakers called on the Commission many times to do what FATF was not able to. The Commission committed to complete a review by the end of 2025 to get their support to remove the United Arab Emirates and Gibraltar from the list earlier this year. POLITICO saw a draft of the Russia decision, which will be an annex to the list. In other internal documents, the Commission had said that the assessment was complicated by the lack of information-sharing with Moscow. The EU already has a wide range of sanctions heavily limiting access to EU financial services for Russian firms. The blacklisting is landing as the EU executive is trying to end Belgium’s resistance to using the revenues from Moscow’s frozen assets to fund Ukraine. The move will oblige financial institutions to strengthen due diligence on all transactions and force banks that have not already acted to further de-risk. The EU has usually aligned itself with FATF decisions, but from this year, it has its own Anti-Money Laundering Authority. AMLA will contribute to drafting the blacklist from July 2027. Dutch top official Hennie Verbeek-Kusters, a former chair of the financial intelligence cooperation body Egmont Group, is set to join the AMLA authority executive board after a positive hearing with lawmakers held behind closed doors, one of the EU officials said. A vote on the appointment is due on Dec. 15, said a third official.

Heidi Kingstone is a journalist and author covering human rights issues, conflict and politics. Her most recent book is “Genocide: Personal Stories, Big Questions.” Slavery is alive and thriving, and it’s wrapped inside shiny chocolate bars that promise to be “fair trade,” “child-labor free” and “sustainable.” In West Africa, which produces more than 60 percent of the world’s cocoa, over 1.5 million children still work under hazardous conditions. Kids, some as young as five, use machetes to crack pods open in their hands, carry loads that weigh more than they do and spray toxic pesticides without protection. Meanwhile, of the roughly 2 million metric tons of cocoa the Ivory Coast produces each year, between 20 percent and 30 percent is grown illegally in protected forests. And satellite data from Global Forest Watch shows an increase in deforestation across key cocoa-growing regions as farmers, desperate for income, push deeper into forest reserves. The bitter truth is that despite decades of pledges, certification schemes and packaging glowing with virtue — of forests saved, farmers empowered and consciences soothed — most chocolate companies have failed to eradicate exploitation from their supply chains. Today, many cocoa farmers in the Ivory Coast and Ghana still earn less than a dollar a day, well below the poverty line. According to a 2024 report by the International Cocoa Initiative, the average farmer earns only 40 percent of a living wage. Put starkly, as the global chocolate market swells close to a $150 billion a year in 2025, the average farmer now receives less than 6 percent of the value of a single chocolate bar, whereas in the 1970s they received more than 50 percent. Then there’s the use of child labor, which is essentially woven into the fabric of this economy, where we have been sold the illusion of progress. From the 2001 Harkin-Engel Protocol — a voluntary agreement to end child labor by the world’s chocolate giants — to today’s glossy environmental, social and governance (ESG) reports, every initiative has promised progress and delivered delay. In 2007, the industry quietly redefined “public certification,” shifting it from a commitment to consumer labeling to a vague pledge to compile statistics on labor conditions. It missed the original 2010 deadline to eliminate child labor, as well as a new target to reduce it by 70 percent by 2020. And that year, a study by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center found that hazardous child labor in cocoa production increased from 2008 to 2019. “We covered a story about a ship carrying trafficked children,” recalled journalist Humphrey Hawksley, who first exposed the issue in the BBC documentary called Slavery: A Global Investigation. “The chocolate companies refused to comment and spoke as one industry. That was their rule. Even now, none of them is slave-free,” he added. As it stands, many of the more than 1.5 million West African children working in cocoa production are trafficked from neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali. Traffickers lure them with false promises or outright abduction, offering children as young as 10 either bicycles or small sums to travel to the Ivory Coast. There, they are sold to farmers for as little as $34 each. And once on these farms, they are trapped. They work up to 14 hours a day, sleep in windowless sheds with no clean water or toilets, and most never see the inside of a classroom. Last but not least, we come to deforestation: Since its independence, more than 90 percent of the Ivory Coast’s forests have disappeared due to cocoa farming. In 2024, deforestation accelerated despite corporate commitments to halt it by 2025, as declining soil fertility and stagnant prices pushed farmers farther into the forest to plant new cocoa trees. But as Reuters Correspondent for West and Central Africa Ange Aboa described them, such labels are “the biggest scam of the century!” | Lena Klimkeit/Picture Alliance via Getty Images Certification labels like “Rainforest Alliance” and “Fairtrade” are supposed to prevent this. But as Reuters Correspondent for West and Central Africa Ange Aboa described them, such labels are “the biggest scam of the century!” Complicit in all of this are the financiers and investors who profit. For example, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund is the world’s largest investor, and Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) is a shareholder in 9,000 corporations, including Nestlé, Mondelez, Hershey, Barry Callebaut and Lindt — all part of the direct chocolate cluster. NBIM also has shares in McDonald’s, Starbucks, Unilever, the Dunkin’ parent company and Tim Hortons — the indirect high-volume buyer cluster. “The richest families in cocoa — the Marses, the Ferreros, the Cargills, the Jacobs — are billionaires thanks to the exploitation of the poorest children on earth,” said journalist and human rights campaigner Fernando Morales-de la Cruz, the founder of Cacao for Change. “And countries like Norway, which claim to be ethical, profit from slavery and child labor.” The problem is, few are asking who picks the cocoa. And though the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, which was adopted last year, requires large companies to address human rights and environmental abuses in their supply chains, critics say the directive’s weaknesses, loopholes, and delayed enforcement will blunt its impact. However, all of this could still be fixed. Currently, a metric ton of cocoa sells for about $5,000 on world markets, but Morales-de la Cruz estimates that a fair farm-gate price would be around $7,500 per metric ton. To that end, he advocates for binding international trade standards that enforce living incomes and transparent pricing, modeled on the World Trade Organization’s compliance mechanisms. “Human rights should be as binding in trade as tariffs,” he insisted. The solution isn’t to buy more “ethical” bars but to demand accountability and support legislation that makes exploitation unprofitable. “We can’t shop our way to justice,” he said. So, as the trees in the Ivory Coast’s forests fall, the profits in Europe and North America continue to soar. And two decades after the industry vowed to end child labor, the cocoa supply chain remains one of the world’s most exploitative and least accountable. Moreover, the European Parliament’s vote on the Omnibus simplification package last month laid bare the corporate control and moral blindness still present in EU policymaking, all behind talk of “cutting red tape.” “Yet Europe’s media and EU-funded NGOs stay silent, talking of competitiveness and green transitions, while ignoring the children who harvest its cocoa, coffee and cotton,” said Morales-de la Cruz. “Europe cannot claim to defend human rights while profiting from exploitation.” However, until the industry pays a fair price and governments enforce real accountability, every bar of chocolate remains an unpaid moral debt.