COP10 and MOP3 Postponed to 2024

The 10th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP10) to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), and the Third session of the Meeting of the Parties (MOP3) to the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products, has been postponed from November 2023 to as early as possible in 2024.

The postponement is due to gradually worsening civil unrest in Panama, the host country for COP10 and MOP3. According to the WHO FCTC Secretariat, the intention is to still hold the meetings in Panama, but only when the security situation stabilises and the safety of the more than 1,500 expected attendees can be guaranteed.

One of the agenda items at MOP3 that is of particular interest to the tax stamp and traceability community relates to track and trace systems and the global information-sharing focal point (GSP) required under Article 8 of the Protocol. The discussions around this topic were to be based on a report ¹ issued by the MOP Working Group on Tracking and Tracing Systems.

The report includes recommendations on the further development of the GSP, an interim version of which was implemented in September 2023 at the FCTC Secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland.

The interim version consists of an end- to-end encrypted messaging system to enable parties to exchange traceability data against unique identification markings found on tobacco products in their territory. It is designed to have minimum impact and be technologically neutral, in order to facilitate adoption by all parties.

The working group report recommends that any developments beyond the interim version be proportionate to actual usage and available resources of the parties, given that the interim version already complies with Protocol obligations. More advanced versions of the GSP would then build on the interim system, in that they would continue to operate through a web-based platform through which encrypted emails are exchanged between a requesting and receiving party.

To this end, the working group called for quantitative and qualitative criteria to be put in place for assessing the need to move to more advanced GSPs. Apart from the number of track and trace systems in place, these criteria would include the percentage of parties actually sending and receiving requests via the GSP.

The group therefore stressed the need for automated usage statistics to be produced by the interim GSP in order to monitor the situation, and this requirement would have been one of the key items up for approval at MOP3.

With regard to discussions around track and trace systems themselves, at MOP3 the Secretariat was going to report new findings on existing track and trace systems, using a questionnaire supported by a review of information in the public domain and virtual interviews with selected parties.

Apart from the regulations laid out in the Protocol, no other technical specifications have been implemented as mandatory requirements for track and trace systems. Therefore, the parties are free to implement their programmes according to their specific national or regional needs, as long as these fall within the framework of the Protocol.

The job of the track and trace working group, therefore, is to carry out ongoing reviews of good tobacco track and trace practices, and MOP3 would have provided an ideal stage for presenting its latest review to the parties.

Let’s hope the unrest in Panama dies down quickly.

1 - https://storage.googleapis.com/protocol-mop3-source/Main%20documents/fctc-mop3-5-en.pdf