The European Union has backed its decision to hire a Republican-linked PR firm with a string of fossil fuel clients.

Washington-based consultancy DCI Group was employed by the EU’s delegation to the U.S. days before President Donald Trump’s election on November 5, with a brief to advise on “communications and public engagement strategy [with] an emphasis on promoting EU trade and investment in the United States”. 

The appointment was revealed last week by Politico, as EU member states reacted to Trump’s threats to impose sweeping tariffs around the U.S. market.

DeSmog has since found that the consultancy has represented America’s largest oil and gas trade body, which has a history of casting doubt on established climate science.

Alongside fossil fuel giants Shell and ExxonMobil, DCI Group’s 2024 clients include the American Petroleum Institute (API), the main trade association and lobby group for U.S. oil interests which once outlined its goal to promote “uncertainties” about climate change and make it a “non-issue”.

The EU has defended its work with the consultancy, while appearing to downplay its significance. In an emailed statement to DeSmog on Thursday, the delegation revealed that it had signed “a very low value contract” of $15,000 (£12,000) with DCI Group for a four month period.

“The European Union delegation’s decision to work with a consulting firm is aimed at fostering dialogue on key issues, including trade,” the EU spokesperson said. 

“It is standard practice for diplomatic missions to reach out to diverse political groups, ensuring that all Americans, regardless of political affiliation, can have a better understanding of EU policies.”

The EU delegation did not respond to DeSmog’s questions about whether DCI’s fossil fuel and mining clients could represent a conflict with the EU’s endangered climate and nature targets.

The DCI Group has boasted about its new client on its website, claiming that the EU “pulled the ace out of its sleeve in the trade war with the United States” by hiring “former close associates of Donald Trump”.

Pascoe Sabido, a campaigner at non-profit Corporate Europe Observatory, said DCI’s client list could demonstrate a “glaring” conflict of interest.

“The European Commission should not be hiring lobby firms that have represented big polluters,” he told DeSmog.

“It shows just how normalised the fossil fuel industry and their enablers have become in Brussels. Who else is the firm representing, and is it using its contract with the Commission to help its other clients?”

DCI Group has also been named in an ongoing U.S. justice department investigation into the alleged hacking of climate activists who had filed lawsuits against ExxonMobil for misleading the public over fossil fuels’ impact on climate change. Both DCI Group and ExxonMobil have previously denied involvement in the hacking.

DCI and the American Petroleum Institute did not respond to DeSmog’s requests for comment. 

American Petroleum Institute

The EU’s deployment of DCI comes amid an anti-green backlash fuelled by a global rise in populist right-wing parties.

Since his election on January 20, President Donald Trump has vowed to increase fossil fuel extraction, remove mention of climate change from government websites, and ban offshore wind. In the EU, a raft of ambitious policies to cut greenhouse gas emissions are at risk following a rightward shift in last year’s European elections.

DeSmog has previously reported how Trump’s Republican party enjoys a close relationship with the American Petroleum Institute, and has received significant funding from oil and gas companies. 

In 2020 the group reportedly received $10 million from Shell alone. The API spent $6,250,000 on lobbying in 2024, according to the Open Secrets database. 

Last month the API welcomed Donald Trump’s executive orders to “unleash American energy”, including new domestic oil drilling in Alaska, lifting the pause on LNG exports, and “roll[ing] back heavy handed vehicle mandates”. 

A 20 January API press release said: “This is a new day for American energy, and we applaud President Trump for moving swiftly to chart a new path where U.S. oil and natural gas are embraced, not restricted.”

In 2018, the API launched a project “to convince Hispanic and black communities to support the Trump administration’s proposed expansion of offshore drilling”. 

The group has a long record of opposing climate action and working to discredit climate science. In 1998 an API “communications plan”, obtained by The New York Times and Greenpeace in 2007, said the group’s aim was to promote “uncertainty” about climate change and embed that into “conventional wisdom”.

It added: “Unless ‘climate change’ becomes a non-issue, meaning that the Kyoto proposal is defeated and there are no further initiatives to thwart the threat of climate change, there may be no moment when we can declare victory for our efforts.”

In 2003, API partly funded a paper co-authored by Willie Soon, a Malaysian astrophysicist, claiming the climate has not changed in 2,000 years. Soon, who has received funding from fossil fuel interests, has also claimed that climate change is caused by solar activity. 

DCI also worked for Citizens’ Alliance for Responsible Energy (CARE). The pro-fossil fuel lobby group has praised oil, gas and coal power, and claimed in 2015: “Scientists cannot even agree whether there IS a global warming trend at this time, much less agree to its cause.”

Climate scientists at the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have stressed that “it is a statement of fact, we cannot be any more certain; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet”. 2024 was the hottest year on record, with the Paris Agreement to limit catastrophic temperature rises “in grave danger”, according to experts at the World Health Organization.