Issue 6, December 2000

During the December Plenary, Parliament will vote on the proposed EU Directive on the manufacture, presentation and sale of tobacco products. The Environment Committee’s recommendations for Second Reading will be presented by the rapporteur, Jules Maaten, MEP.

This Directive provides an opportunity to move towards proper regulation of a consumer product that is uniquely hazardous. Your vote will determine the outcome of a campaign which has pitched the commercial interests of a totally unacceptable industry against the health interests of EU citizens – the people who voted for you to represent them in Parliament. Please honour the trust that has been placed in you, by supporting the Directive, better regulation within the Internal Market and improved health protection.

These are the aspects of the Directive that have attracted most controversy:

1. Legal base

The Directive is based on Art 95 of the Treaty, which regulates the Internal Market. This is right for two reasons. First, the Directive is a recast of three previous Directives (1989, 1990, 1992) that are based on the former Internal Market article (100a) and have never themselves been challenged in Court. Second, the Directive seeks to regulate the contents of a product which is widely traded throughout the EU. All EU citizens deserve the same standards of consumer safety and consumer information.

Opponents of the Directive have tried to cast doubt on the legal base following the recent ECJ ruling on the EU’s right to regulate tobacco advertising. Apart from a common theme of tobacco, the two issues are entirely different. The Directive annulled by the Court was intended to harmonise rules on promotion. This Directive is concerned with the contents of a product that is consumed by millions of EU citizens and causes harm to consumers when used exactly as intended by the industry.

It is right that this Directive, in common with others intended to protect consumers’ interests, should be based on the Internal Market provisions of the Treaty. Please oppose any attempt to reject the legal base.

2. Carbon monoxide

The Directive regulates the yields of toxic substances found in tobacco smoke: nicotine, which causes addiction; tar, which causes cancer; and carbon monoxide, which contributes to heart disease. Tar is already regulated at EU level, nicotine is regulated in most Member States and carbon monoxide was regulated in Finland before its accession to the EU. Some countries have indicated their intention to regulate for carbon monoxide unilaterally, if the EU fails to do so. This justification for EU action is addressed in the Environment Committee amendment's, which we urge you to support.

3. Exports

The Directive regulates tobacco products ‘marketed or manufactured’ in the Member States. This definition means that the Directive covers products manufactured in the EU, but intended for export to third countries. It has therefore been interpreted, by the tobacco industry, as an export ban – which, they claim, will lead to job losses. In practice, of course, the Directive doesn’t ban exports at all; but it does mean that they would have to abide by the EU’s regulations on maximum yields.

No-one has produced any evidence to show that consumers in other countries will not buy cigarettes that respect EU standards. The allegations of job losses – ‘people’s livelihoods at risk’ - have never been substantiated. Instead, the industry is effectively demanding double standards: less risky cigarettes for the EU market, but high tar for everywhere else.

There is no difference in the value of human life, whether the consumer lives in the EU or elsewhere. Health protection should be based on equity: a principle that the Directive recognises. It is a principle endorsed by the Environment Committee – which proposes no change to this aspect of the Directive, other than a two year delay (from Dec 2004 to Dec 2006) in its application to exports This gives the industry plenty of time in which to adjust.

Please support the Environment Committee’s proposals on exports.

4. Misleading descriptors

The Commission proposed that words like ‘mild/light’, which give the impression that the product is less harmful, should be banned – unless authorised by individual Member States. At First Reading, the European Parliament supported the proposed ban and deleted the clause allowing Member States any form of exemption. This position was also supported by the Council – i.e., no use of such words as descriptors of tobacco products, anywhere in the EU.

Now, however, the Environment Committee has responded to concerns expressed following the ECJ ruling and proposes an exemption for such words that have been registered as part of a trade mark and ‘genuinely and effectively marketed’ prior to the adoption of the Directive.

There is a disadvantage in this. The industry will do its best to exploit anything less than a total ban. The proposed derogation effectively renders this provision of the Directive inoperable and therefore worthless.

Please reject any attempt to modify the First Reading agreement on product descriptors

5. Health warnings

The Commission proposed that health warnings should be made more legible (black print on a white background) and increased in size (to 25% of the surface of the pack, both front and back). In June, Parliament went further and voted for larger warnings – 35% on the front and 45% on the back.

This approach was not taken up by Council in the Common Position adopted in July. The Environment Committee is now recommending a compromise increase in the warnings, i.e., to 30% on the front and 40% on the back.

We urge you to support the Environment Committee on the size of the warnings, and also in permitting Member States to authorise the use of colour photographs or other illustrations.

At a meeting in the European Parliament on Wednesday 29 November 2000 organised by Jules Maaten MEP, the Vice President Corporate Affairs of Philip Morris, David Davies, declared that his company was not in favour of the conclusions of the Legal Affairs Committee to challenge the legal basis of the new Tobacco Products Directive.

Health protection is providing a major credibility problem for the EU. If the concept of a ‘citizens Europe’ is to mean anything at all, the EU has to behave, and to be seen, as an effective champion of citizens’ health. This is one of the clear lessons of the BSE crisis – a lesson the Community seemed to be learning, with its commitment to consumer health protection and current proposals (now before Parliament) for the future public health programme.

The recent ECJ judgement on the tobacco advertising Directive throws all this in doubt. It seems to say that commercial interests are far more important than health protection and that the so-called ‘rights’ of big business are more important than the basic right to good health of individual citizens.

The Treaty calls on the Community to ensure a high level of human health protection in all its policies. The Parliament should now show that it understands what this means, that it is on the side of the citizens and that it is determined to sustain healthy public policies rather than the vested interests of big business. This means taking positive action against Europe’s tobacco epidemic by supporting the Tobacco Products Directive at Second Reading.