Is the European Fee beneath the affect of the Tobacco Foyer?
The European Union has set itself the objective of a “Tobacco-Free Technology” ranging from 2023. This bold objective requires the adoption of latest and fast tobacco management measures. The revision of the directives associated to tobacco, deliberate by the Fee since 2020, has not but taken place.
This inaction will not be a very good signal, in response to the MEPs signing the White Paper of the European Parliament’s Tobacco Working Group. The Fee should urgently respect the commitments to transparency and independence within the WHO Framework Conference on Tobacco Management, a global treaty concluded in 2003, entered into drive in 2005, and ratified by the EU on June 30, 2005.
For a number of years, the European Parliament has been ready for the Fee to schedule the revisions of the 2 European directives associated to tobacco, the 2011 directive on the taxation of tobacco merchandise, and the so-called Tobacco Merchandise Directive (TPD), from 2014. Our laws should certainly consider the emergence of “new tobacco merchandise” comparable to digital cigarettes, puffs, heated tobacco, or nicotine pouches, but additionally the explosion of parallel commerce largely organized by tobacco producers, in addition to information concerning the environmental harm brought on by tobacco cultivation, the manufacture of latest tobacco merchandise, and their consumption.
To spark the mandatory debate and outline the important measures that must be taken, a bunch of European deputies led by Michèle Rivasi (Greens/EFA), Anne-Sophie Pelletier (The Left) and Pierre Larrouturou (S&D) met between 2021 and 2023, with the participation of public well being associations Smoke-Free Partnership (SFP), Alliance In opposition to Tobacco (ACT), the Tobacco Management Analysis Group (TCRG) from the College of Tub, Company Europe Observatory (CEO), and unbiased specialists.
The themes of the parallel tobacco commerce, the “Dentsu Monitoring/Jan Hoffmann” traceability scandal, the lobbying of cigarette producers and their associates, and the environmental harm of tobacco had been notably studied.
The synthesis of those roundtables took the type of a White Paper which will likely be offered on April 11, 2024. Its findings are irrefutable: the White Paper demonstrates how the European Fee all-too-easily opens its doorways to the tobacco foyer, displaying itself to be notably permeable to the trade’s calls for, though they’re opposite to public well being and the general public funds of the 27 member states, and to the right administration of our establishments.
The White Paper of the European Parliament’s Working Group on Tobacco will likely be distributed in French and English to the 27 Member States, the Fee, political teams, present and future MEPs, NGOs, and the media, with the ambition of fostering the emergence of a Tobacco-Free Europe.
On the eve of the White Paper’s presentation, the members of the European Parliament’s Working Group on Tobacco spare a thought for Michèle Rivasi, the true soul of this collective effort, whose untimely demise deeply moved them. This White Paper is primarily hers; her combat towards industrial lobbies and for the transparency and independence of public insurance policies have to be shared.
PRESENTATION ON APRIL 11, 2024, OF THE WHITE PAPER FROM THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT WORKING GROUP: IS THE COMMISSION UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF THE TOBACCO LOBBY?
Contact: MEP Anne-Sophie Pelletier: anne-sophie.pelletier@europarl.europa.eu