EurActiv reported yesterday that the French nationalist-right party, the Front National, might abstain from a vote in the European Parliament tomorrow on the EU tobacco tax revision. If they do, the report will probably fall, and there are conflicting reports about what that means, if indeed it means anything at all.
Tobacco tax, like every other tax policy in the EU, goes through a special legislative procedure where the Parliament gives its opinion, but the Council is free to ignore it. Member State Finance ministers, who sit in the Council, must agree unanimously for any proposal to become law. In this case, they’ve so far failed to do so, and seem to be quite a long way from agreement.
Parliament has to agree its opinion: the one the Council can ignore. That’s been authored by Czech far right MEP Tomas Kubin, amended by a Committee, and will be voted on by the full chamber this evening. Left leaning parties have said they’ll oppose it (we’ll come to why in a moment), the centre right will on the whole support it, and the far-right seems split.
There are two key elements to this report. The first is the minimum rates to be applied to tobacco and nicotine products, which have been significantly reduced when compared to the original proposal from the EU Commission with the exception of those on vapes, which have actually been increased. The second is an explicit statement that different nicotine products carry different health risks: in essence, the recognition that safer nicotine products exist. The first ever proposed in an official decision from any EU institution.
The left won’t support either, the centre right see it as a good compromise, and the far right are also largely on board. Except the French.
Rates on vapes are the biggest loser in this report, with the Parliament suggesting 30 cents per ml: an extra EUR 3,60 per 10ml bottle when you account for the additional VAT. The French far right are focused on national elections this year where they are favourites to take the Presidency, and want to court vapers’ votes. So despite their group passing this report in Committee, the party line in the final vote seems to be an abstention. If they abstain, that probably kills the whole thing.
Why, you might reasonably ask, does any of this matter? The report won’t affect the outcome anyway, so who cares?
EurActiv thinks that if the report fails, it represents a win for the EU Commission, which almost by definition means a loss for people who use safer nicotine products. The journalist, Sarantis Michapoulos, is a seasoned tobacco policy watcher. So why does he think the way he does?
The answer tells you everything that’s wrong with the EU, and I say that as a committed European and part-time Federalist.
Let’s say the report doesn’t get the votes tonight. That doesn’t kill it. It sends it back to the Committee, where Kubin will need to find a new majority. Sources close to all this tell me that he’ll try and find it on the left, and that the left will let the right keep its low rates (except on vapes, which will still end up being thrown under the bus), but remove the principle of taxation according to harm. That’ll get Kubin his majority, the thinking goes.
There’s a lot of ifs and buts here. For Kubin to do a deal with the left under pressure from the Commission, he’d have to break with his political group and cause significant damage to the bloc within which he sits, particularly if the French – the largest group within Kubin’s far right – would oppose it. Kubin would extract a real price from both.
But that price wouldn’t be on this file. It’d come somewhere else entirely: maybe on migration policy, or the EU budget, which Bardella’s National Rally (the French group I’m referring to) wants to cut significantly, and which forms a part of their national campaign.
Would the left and the Commission be willing to pay such a price? Perhaps. For whatever reason, screwing over people who use safer nicotine products seems to be a priority for this particular administration and this particular version of the centre left.
All of which means we need to consider the nightmare scenario.
Kubin does a deal with the Commission and the left, removing the principle of nicotine products being taxed and regulated according to their very different risk profiles. In exchange, the left and the Commission make a concession on migration and the budget which Bardella and his party can sell as a win back home during the elections. The far right stays cohesive, but protecting the rights of nicotine users falls down their political agenda. The centre right passes the report. And then that thinking infects the Tobacco Products Directive, which gets traded off in the same manner.
In that scenario, we all lose.
I’ve spent the last few days trying to figure out what I think about all this. I’m a Brussels politics guy at heart, and this isn’t cut and dried. There’s a bunch of alternatives to the nightmare scenario I just laid out. What matters is how we get there.
I certainly won’t mourn any official document that supports punitive taxes on vapes, nor will I tell anyone they should support it with their heart.
But I can’t oppose a report that finally gives me what I’ve been campaigning for for over a decade: official recognition by an EU institution that some nicotine products are incredibly harmful and others are not.
So what’s the right thing to do? Hold your nose and call for support, or stand your ground and try to burn it all down?
Honest answer: I don’t know. In reality, if this passes it won’t matter a damn when actual tax rates are decided, but on balance it probably hurts our enemies – the Commission, most of the left and the NGO industrial complex – far more than it hurts us because of the relative risk declarations.
In tobacco control, there’s something called the scream test. This is the practice of assessing a proposed tobacco control measure’s likely effectiveness by gauging the intensity of industry opposition. The louder the industry screams, the better the policy is assumed to be.
Apply that test now. Who’s screaming the loudest about this report? It’s the NGO industrial complex that is dedicated to destroying everything I believe in and despises all of us personally, and the supposedly leftwing politicians who have their backs.
Whatever happens, we need to know what the other side will do next. They’ll insist that the relative risk statements are taken out. They’ll call that a win, because it gives them a template to work from next time around. And then they’ll apply the same logic to TPD when pushing for product bans.
So if we really want to burn this thing to the ground, which appeals to me instinctively, there needs to be a really damn good plan for what happens the day after. Because the other side certainly has one.
