EU MEPs Prepare ‘Arms’ Against Tobacco Lobbyists

In the May 2023 issue of Tax Stamp & Traceability News™, we reported on how the tobacco lobbying concerns of several EU parliament members were largely being ignored by the European Commission.

These concerns were revealed during an April workshop organised by an informal EU parliamentary working group on tobacco products, led by French MEPs Michèle Rivasi and Anne-Sophie Pelletier.

The workshop, which was open to civil society organisations, was entitled ‘Tobacco Lobby Influence Strategies within European Institutions’. It addressed the lobbying efforts and ‘soft power’ of the tobacco industry to influence EU policies, and concluded that the permeability of some Commission departments to such lobbying was causing delays in the revision of two important directives.

Since then, the same MEPs have held another workshop titled ‘Taxation and Traceability: Levers in the Fight Against Parallel Tobacco Trade’, where the issue of delayed revisions was again raised.

‘The revision of Directive 2011/64/EU on the taxation of excise products, including tobacco, together with the revision of Directive 2014/40/EU on tobacco products, known as the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD), are two highly anticipated updates that are being constantly delayed by a Commission under the influence of tobacco lobbying,’ explained Michèle Rivasi.

‘The taxation and traceability of tobacco products in Europe are major issues for both member states and the Union,’ she continued. ‘On the one hand, the disparate taxation between countries undermines the efforts of national and European public authorities to fight against parallel trade.

‘On the other hand, the tobacco product traceability system, which aims, among other things, to combat parallel trade, does not comply with the WHO Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products, although ratified by the European Union. Largely influenced by tobacco lobbying and entrusted to a company with a suspected conflict of interest with the Commission, the system has proven ineffective.’ 

Therefore, the group concluded that revisions were sorely needed to both directives to help harmonise tax rates across the EU and bring the traceability system in line with Protocol requirements for a strict minimum of interaction with, and delegation of duties to, the tobacco industry.

A final workshop is scheduled for October 2023, on ‘The Hidden Costs of Tobacco’. This will be followed by the release of a white paper containing the lessons and conclusions of the work of the group, carried out in consultation with public health associations and experts. The paper, available in French and English, will be sent to all European political groups and parliamentarians, in order to ‘arm’ them against tobacco lobbyists when work on the revision to the two directives finally gets underway.

In the meantime, the Commission has been given until mid-July 2023 to explain to the European Ombudsman how it assesses the necessity of meetings with tobacco lobbyists, following an Ombudsman enquiry that revealed an ongoing lack of transparency in the Commission’s interactions with these lobbyists.