Watered down tobacco directive approved by MEPs

EU lawmakers today voted on new measures aimed at deterring young people from smoking tobacco, but the Commission's proposal to have large health warnings on 75% of tobacco packages was defeated, as was the proposal to make e-cigarettes a medicinal product, making them only available over the counter at chemists.

MEPs approved the first reading of a draft tobacco directive which could become law in 2014. The vote was preceded by an intense lobbying of MEPs by the tobacco industry, as well as health campaigners.

The vote was welcome by European health commissioner Tonio Borg, who said that the amended text would now go for negotiations between the Council and MEPs.

I welcome #EP positive vote on #TPD, I thank @LindaMcAvanMEP & look forward to engage with @EU_Council for meaningful agreement on the file — Tonio Borg (@borgton) October 8, 2013

Maltese MEP Roberta Metsola said she voted for the final report.

MEPs approve report on #TPD.Proud to have voted to save lives & stop people smoking. Well done @borgton #Malta @TheTimesofMalta @maltatoda — Roberta Metsola MEP (@RobertaMetsola) October 8, 2013

After Tuesday's vote there will be further negotiations with the Council - the grouping of relevant EU ministers. Once agreed, all 28 EU countries will have to make the measures law. MEPs may manage to avoid a second vote and fast-track the legislation so that it is adopted before the May 2014 European elections.

Among the amendments moved today, MEPs voted against having pictorial warnings covering 75% of cigarette packages, as proposed by the Commission. Instead the warnings will cover 65% of packages and placed at the top of tobacco produce.

Moreover, menthol flavoured cigarettes have been banned with possibility for a five-year derogation, while a proposed ban on slim cigarettes was defeated.

The Commission's proposal to treat e-cigarettes as medicinal products, demanding tougher regulation was defeated and these products can be flavoured.

Cigarette packages cannot contain less than 20 cigarettes and the ban on the chewing tobacco known as snus, was maintained.

Before todays vote the EU's health Commissioner Tonio Borg said he was "confident" that the European Parliament would adopt the hotly-debated tobacco directive, after the first vote had been delayed. 

Today the European Parliament voted on whether a pictorial health warning covering 75% of a cigarette package, front and back, should be mandatory across the EU.

Furthermore, MEPs also voted on regulating the increasingly popular e-cigarettes and banning slim cigarettes aimed at young women.

The European Parliament was supposed to vote on the tobacco directive on 10 September, but leaders of the main centre-right political groups in the Parliament, the European People's Party (EPP), the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) and the European Conservatives and Reformist Group (ECR), colluded to postpone the vote until 8 October.

According to leaked documents to the press, tobacco giant Philipp Morris has spent more than €500,000 employing 161 lobbyists and organising meetings with a third of the MEPs in parliament.

"I am long standing member in the Parliament. I've never seen such a lot of pressure and the tools they use are very complicated and very tricky," MEP Karl-Heinz Florenz, centre-right European People's Party group told euronews.

The Greens are denouncing the gifts many of their MEPs have received from tobacco companies. The party has written to the President of the European Parliament asking for a review of the Code of Conduct for MEPs.

"The aim of our letter to the President is to make sure that the Parliament implement what the EU is a party to, the international framework Convention of Tobacco control, which says that you should not meet the tobacco industry unless strictly necessary. If you do, everything must be transparent," explained Green MEP Carl Schlyter.

Former Commissioner for Health John Dalli resigned last year, after an anti-fraud inquiry linked him to an attempt to influence tobacco legislation.

The directive has been shrouded in controversy, with former EU Health Commissioner John Dalli blaming his efforts to introduce the new legislation, which stands to cost the powerful tobacco industry billions of euros, were, hampered and delayed time and time again until he was ultimately forced out of the Commission.

Twelve years after the current directive came into force, smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death in the EU, killing around 700,000 people per year.

Measures taken over the years to cut smoking have had an impact - in the past decade the number of smokers has fallen from nearly 40% in the EU 15 in 2002 to 28% in the EU 27 in 2012 - but tobacco consumption is still a major burden on healthcare systems and the economy.

The rules laid down in 2001 were no longer seen as adequate by the European Commission. New flavourings and packaging used to make some tobacco products more attractive was among the Commission's main concerns.