In the 12 years since the EU first passed the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD)- a set of regulations limiting tobacco sales and promotions aiming to reduce the number of smokers and thereby improving the health of EU citizens – the tobacco industry has been finding loopholes to get around the regulations. Last Tuesday (8 Oct 2013), Members of the EU Parliament (MEPs) were scheduled to vote on an important revision of the Directive. Health warnings on cigarette packets were to be increased, attractive cigarette marketing were to be banned, and electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) were to come under strict regulations.
As it turns out, the tobacco industry already got hold of every detail of the proposed revisions within the 24 hours that they were made behind closed doors. The tobacco companies launched an extraordinarily aggressive lobbying campaign, with Philip Morris International spearheading the effort. Third parties sympathetic to the tobacco cause, such as tobacco retailers and consumers, were roped in to speak against the TPD. More serious, though, is that the tobacco lobby managed to hold large numbers of meetings with some 233-250 MEPs, or about a third of the European Parliament, and used their large economic power to influence them in a period of austerity. Philip Morris’ response in light of the reports is that everything it has done is legitimate, and that if conversely they were to remain silent over the proposal (which was not meant for their ears anyway) it would have been illogical.
The tobacco lobby ropes in third parties and appeals for misplaced sympathy to their economic interests (ITGA)
The result of the vote was a victory for the tobacco lobby, as they succeeded in influencing several crucial areas of contention: increase in warning sizes on cigarette packs will be 65% rather than 75%, ‘slim’ cigarettes targeting young people will not be banned while menthol flavours will only receive a gradual phase-out into 2022, and e-cigarettes will not be regulated as medicines.
Not satisfied with the victory, the tobacco lobby and MEPs with outright support for the industry continues to defend the vote by labelling the initial proposals as ‘crazy’ or unnecessary. Health officials, on the other hand, calls it ‘shameful’ that the European Parliament settled for watered-down rules, placing the health and interests of EU citizens at risk.
More in-depth information can be read from an earlier post, taken from the blog Tobacco Unpacked.
Read more on the event below:
Taken from Reuters UK, 4 Oct 2013:
“There is an unprecedentedly intense lobbying campaign from the industry going on inside the European Parliament with the express intention of trying to frustrate this legislation,” a senior Irish official said on Friday, briefing journalists on condition of anonymity.
“This is completely on a scale way beyond lobbying that normally goes on.”
He said officials had been surprised to discover that cigarette manufacturers and their lobbyists had knowledge of precise elements of the law barely 24 hours after they were agreed behind closed doors.
Internal Philip Morris documents leaked to the media and seen by Reuters show that lobbyists have held over 250 meetings with members of parliament to discuss the legislation, especially with conservatives.
In a statement last month responding to criticism, Philip Morris said it was merely trying to express its views on the legislative proposals, and pointed out that it employed 12,500 people in the EU and had invested hundreds of millions of euros.
“The argument that we should remain silent in the face of a proposal that directly concerns us, and on which we have facts and improvement ideas to share, is illogical,” said Drago Azinovic, the president of the company for the EU region.
“We have and will continue to express our views proactively and transparently. As the EU itself says, this kind of interaction is ‘constant, legitimate and necessary for the quality of democracy’.”
Taken from a joint open letter of 11 health organisations to the President of the EU, 1 Oct 2013:
There is widespread concern that the decision to delay the plenary vote on the TPD was a result of tobacco companies like Philip Morris International and others using their economic and political power to influence MEPs. The postponement of the vote is widely believed to be part of a tobacco industry strategy to delay, weaken or even derail the TPD. The leaked documents show that no less than 233 MEPs (almost one third of the Parliament) have been met by Philip Morris International lobbyists at least once. Several MEPs were listed as having had four or five such meetings.
This large number of meetings (which have taken place behind closed doors, without any transparency such as the publication of minutes from these meetings), constitutes a serious violation of the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) Article 5.3 which is geared towards safeguarding public health policy-making from tobacco industry interference. FCTC Article 5.3 recognises the fundamental and irreconcilable conflict of interest between the tobacco industry and public health policy-making. It also recognises that the tobacco industry has, for decades, been working tirelessly to delay, block, and weaken life-saving health measures, like those enshrined in the FCTC.
FCTC Article 5.3 requires all Parties, when deciding on their public health policies with respect to tobacco control to “. . . act to protect these policies from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry in accordance with national law”.
The WHO’s accompanying guidelines stipulate that decision-makers “should interact with the tobacco industry only when and to the extent strictly necessary to enable them to effectively regulate the tobacco industry and tobacco products.”
The guidelines state that “where interactions with the tobacco industry are necessary, Parties should ensure that such interactions are conducted transparently”.
Taken from European Voice, 3 Oct 2013:
Internal documents from American tobacco giant Philip Morris International, seen by European Voice, suggest that this company alone has used 161 lobbyists, who met 233 MEPs – 31% of the Parliament – from the start of 2011 to June 2012. About half of EPP and ECR MEPs met the company’s lobbyists during that time. A slide presentation from 2011 identified delaying the legislation as a possible way to defeat it.
Last month Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), accused the tobacco lobby of using a “massive army” to “sabotage” the EU vote. She suggested that the lobbyists were trying to delay the legislation until the start of the Greek presidency of the EU on 1 January, hoping that Greece would shelve the directive because it was more tobacco-friendly than the preceding presidencies of Ireland and Lithuania. She also noted that Philip Morris is opening a European distribution centre in Greece.
“Here industry is counting on the historical pattern where economic and commercial interests trump public health concerns,” she told the conference.
The aftermath, taken from the Independent, 8 Oct 2013,
MEPs rejected plans to ban so-called “slim” cigarettes that are particularly attractive to young smokers and opted to phase out menthol cigarettes over eight years rather than three.
They also backed away from proposals to increase the size of health warnings on cigarette packs to cover 75 per cent of the box – agreeing instead to the 65 per cent figure suggested by the industry. The current requirement for health warnings is for 30 per cent minimum coverage on one side and 40 per cent on the other.
“This is a shameful day for the European Parliament, as a centre-right majority has done the bidding of the tobacco industry and voted for weaker rules, which are totally at odds with citizens’ interests and public health,” said Carl Schlyter, who co-chairs the public health committee. “The parliament’s public health committee voted for robust legislation, with a view to tackling the 700,000 Europeans who die from smoking every year, but the core proposals have been scaled back. The only real victors from today’s vote are big tobacco firms, whose aggressive and expensive lobbying campaigns have paid off.”
MEPs rejected calls for e-cigarettes to be subject to the same regulation as nicotine replacement therapies such as patches and gum. The lack of tobacco in e-cigarettes means they are “almost certainly” a much safer way of getting a nicotine hit than smoking cigarettes, according to Cancer Research.
Chris Davies, a Liberal Democrat MEP, said: “E-cigs can be a game changer. Hundreds of former smokers have written to tell me that they have helped them give up cigarettes when nothing else worked. They are successful because they are not medicines but products that smokers enjoy using as an alternative to cigarettes.”
Taken from the Guardian, 8 Oct 2013:
The UK e-cigarette industry, which broadly welcomed the parliament’s vote, said it was already in talks with the Advertising Standards Authority but added that it would not be “sensible, proportionate, reasonable or useful” to ban all advertising.
MEPs decided e-cigarettes should only be regulated as medical products if manufacturers claimed they could cure or prevent smoking tobacco – a decision criticised by the government’s main medicines regulator.
They want to put the products, used by an estimated 1.3 million people in Britain by next year, on the same legal basis as gums, patches and mouth sprays aimed at helping smokers to quit but the industry says the expensive process of licensing would help force alternatives to tobacco off the shelves.
Linda McAvan, Labour MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber and spokesman on tobacco issues for the parliament’s Socialist and Democrat group, said: “We know that it is children, not adults, who start smoking. And despite the downward trend in most member states of adult smokers, the World Health Organisation figures show worrying upward trends in a number of our member states of young smokers.
“We need to stop tobacco companies targeting young people with an array of gimmicky products and we need to make sure that cigarette packs carry effective warnings.”
Martin Callanan, the Conservative MEP for North East England, said: “Forcing e-cigs off the shelves would have been totally crazy. These are products that have helped countless people stop smoking more harmful cigarettes and yet some MEPs wanted to make them harder to manufacture than ordinary tobacco.”
Katherine Devlin, president of Ecita, the e-cigarette industry association, said “the really important” decision by MEPs not to support medicines regulation meant that was now off the table.
British American Tobacco claimed the larger health warnings demanded by MEPs went “well beyond” what was needed to inform consumers of health risks from smoking while a ban on mentholated cigarettes would increase demand for black-market goods.