“Out-of-control immigration policies and Islamist violence are frightening people and destabilizing Europe’s democracies”, lamented German media magnate Matthias Dophner in a piece for the Bildt newspaper, which he owns, in November last year.
“Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China are waging or funding war on our doorstep and are trying to further alienate the US and the EU in order to weaken freedom. Economies of the “old world” are stagnating or collapsing”, he went on.
“And in Brussels they are working on banning smoking [and vaping] outdoors! It shows the weakness of the EU”
Since then, the European Parliament has rejected a vaping ban and the Commission has backed away from it, making clear to all its critics that the ban is “non-legislative” – or, in other words, not worth the paper it’s written on. But some Member States won’t let go.
And so it was that a group of 12, led by the Netherlands, wrote this week to Health Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi demanding that he bring forward legislation this year to crack down on vapes and nicotine pouches. That may seem like a lot, but it’s less than half of EU Member States, representing less than 40% of the bloc’s population: a long way from the 65% you’d need to get any such proposal into law.
(As a sidenote – Politico covered this as a “scoop” on Monday. While this is technically true, both we and Euractiv had the exact same letter three weeks previously when it was just the Dutch minister who had signed it, a fact that Politico – which is also owned by Dophner – failed to recognise. A citation would have been nice, guys.)
What’s more, German MEPs from the CDU/CSU parties are now proudly in favour of harm reduction. The most senior CDU MEP on health matters, Dr Peter Liese, demanded that the Commission withdraw its last vape ban proposal on account of the fact that it would “encourage Euroskepticism”. At a conference held by an environmental charity last week, Liese told the assembled audience how well he knows the incoming German Chancellor, Friedrich Mertz.
Without Germany, any proposed crackdown would struggle to get the votes of enough EU countries to make it onto the statute books, and that’s before the European Parliament gets involved.
It’s today’s European Parliament that would need to approve any “crackdown”. The same Parliament that overwhelmingly voted against banning vaping in public spaces six months ago. The dynamic there hasn’t changed much since we reported that:
EPP (centre-right) believes that public policy should recognise that vaping is safer than smoking; but the groups to its left won’t even vote for a report that mentions such heresy, science and common sense be damned.
The same voices on the left that refuse to recognise harm reduction are those calling loudest for sweeping vape bans to be brought in when the EU revises its tobacco control laws in the next year or so. When that happens, Parliament will have real teeth: anything it won’t vote for doesn’t make it onto the statute book. By the looks of it, if the Commission tries the same “ban everything” approach it did here, it can expect the same result.
The Parliamentary dynamics haven’t changed much since November, but a lot else has. The EU will, for only the second time in its history, issue common debt to finance a massive hike in defence spending. The bloc’s current obsession is cutting red tape, not printing more of it. EU countries are grappling with stagnant economies and the end of the post Cold War era where security was guaranteed by US firepower, just as Russia threatens Poland and the Baltic States.
Even if you do believe the nonsense – and it is nonsense – about vaping being some sort of public health threat, it’s difficult to argue that sweet smelling vapes that offend a few high minded public health types are the priority for legislative action. Parliamentary time and political capital do not grow on trees.
More defence spending and more debt inevitably equals difficult decisions on public spending. Brussels is already unpopular, the far right is already surging, and there are difficult times ahead. Why pick a fight with people who just want a safer way to consume nicotine just when you need their support on the big ticket items?
In his last sentence, Dophner sums it up well. “Instead of dealing with real problems, the leadership is delivering politics on side issues and patronising the people. And the people are losing respect.”
