This week a group of eight European Union health ministers signed a letter demanding stricter measures to control and eventually eliminate tobacco harm reduction products like e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches. While their calls to future proof the regulation by banning any further innovative nicotine products was predictable, something interesting was written between the lines of their letter.

Eight health ministers signed the letter. There are 27 health ministers in the European Union, implying that 19 ministers were presented with the demands and declined to support them. That is more than two thirds of the European Council members who will be expected to vote on this directive. And of the eight signatories, two ministers (from France and Spain) are facing elections shortly where the leading parties are both Eurosceptic and not as supportive of the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD). 

But even with just eight health ministers, it seems likely that the irrational, uninformed and compromised EU Heath Commissioner, Olivér Várhelyi, will use the letter to advance his more radical objectives. Many of these ideas have already become commonplace among the Brussels chattering classes.

A Ban on Innovation

The letter, sent to the Commissioner by the Dutch health minister, calls for the total ban on nicotine pouches (the safest tobacco harm reduction product), a broad flavour ban, a strict cap on nicotine levels and, most significantly, the introduction of a “market freeze” on new nicotine (or nicotine-like) products. 

With the market freeze, the eight health ministers are effectively calling for a ban on innovation, product improvement and enhanced consumer safety measures. It should be noted that the letter did not address specific tobacco product issues at all, focusing only on the alternatives that have been successful in helping millions of Europeans quit smoking.

We have to remind ourselves that the signatories of this letter are European health ministers who should be committed to preventative health strategies, harm reduction policies, product safety improvements and reducing the impact of carcinogenic products on their populations. Rather than defending any of these principles, the ministers preferred to go on a rant against what they now refer to as the “nicotine industry”.

The 19 health ministers who declined to sign the letter have probably read some of the content in the EU consultation on the TPD, hearing what 120,000 EU citizens think, understand the importance of harm reduction and preventative health policies, have strategies in place to prevent youth nicotine uptake and accept that alternative nicotine products are not synonymous with Big Tobacco. 

This letter is a wake-up call to EU governments that the revision of the Tobacco Products Directive, until now largely driven by activists in the WHO, EU-funded health NGOs and Michael Bloomberg’s tobacco control flotilla, needs careful attention and some common sense.

A House Divided

With only eight of 27 health ministers promoting these policies, the EU is clearly divided on the revision of the Tobacco Products Directive.

Europe has never been a single entity and rather than embracing the diversity of cultures (the Canadian approach), Brussels has always tried to harmonise and unite the continent despite the wrinkles and crevices. This unity was a founding principle to avoid Europe ever again falling into a full-scale war, but that identity has faded as Brussels’ powers expanded. 

Powerful visionaries like Jacques Delors could push through the divisions despite the finger-wagging of a Margaret Thatcher or the opportunism of a François Mitterrand. But Brussels is now run by a bureaucrat limping to the end of her second term, a resurgent Russia, a belligerent China and a transactional United States adding further divisions on the European project. EU Member States are anything but united on these strategies, let alone on policies toward immigration, trade, energy or climate change. 

With growing disunity, the EU has become dysfunctional and incapable of implementing coherent policies. There is now talk of a “core Europe” and other types of membership arrangements. Schengen disappeared over the last year as Germany returned to border controls. And in the face of this crisis, Brussels seems to be fiddling on nicotine pouches while the Berlaymont is burning.

REACHing for the Stars

I cut my lobbying teeth more than two decades ago during the REACH Directive. Over those six years, the issue had evolved. It soon became clear that REACH was no longer simply about how Europe should regulate its chemicals and manufacturing sectors, but rather how Brussels could fit into its new, more powerful legislative role while still serving the interests of EU citizens, innovation, trade and industry. What was at stake was the legitimacy of the EU as a regulatory entity. The public needs to believe the EU that brought a common market, open borders, free trade and a single currency could also deliver benefits at the social, health and consumer levels. REACH was not about chemicals, it was about the ability of the EU to effectively govern and earn the trust of European citizens, employers and businesses.

Trust in the European project is now, once again, in focus. As extremist parties are increasingly pushing the agenda, and are starting to become more normalised in governments, there is more scrutiny, and criticism toward the decisions coming out of a distant, unaccountable bureaucracy. EU governments have always tried to claim credit for beneficial policies and blame Brussels for the negative ones, but since Brexit (and maybe the Polish plumber), anti-EU policies have become vote winners as right-wing platforms in Germany, France and elsewhere are openly considering leaving or fundamentally reforming the EU. 

Not since REACH has a single regulation pushed Brussels into a legitimacy crisis as much as the revision of the Tobacco Products Directive. Extremist parties in Spain and France are campaigning against the TPD as a further example of an out of touch Brussels.

Losing Europe

What will happen when millions of voters who reclaimed their health with tobacco harm reduction products wake up on January 1 to discover their products banned, severely limited or massively taxed by some distant regulatory body? Brussels will rightly be blamed and their governments will be expected to fix this problem. The EU may have appeased the affluent health elites running European NGOs or the Bloomberg-managed faction in the WHO, but they will have lost the trust of a large, outspoken segment of the European population. 

And without trust, do you think for a moment these people fighting to avoid returning to smoking would follow the laws and pay the increased taxes for inferior products? People contributing to the EU consultation on the TPD have already answered that question. This prohibitionist strategy didn’t work a century ago, how much more with today’s commercial technologies? Black markets, lost tax revenue, poor product safety and the loss of age verification control will be Brussels’ lasting legacy – a black spot on the legitimacy of the EU that will play out for decades to come.

With the bumbling EU Health Commissioner taking his own ambitions into this political maelstrom, ignoring clear thinking from EU citizens who contributed to his consultation and the 19 EU Member States health ministers who don’t see this as a battle between good and evil, Brussels is needlessly shooting itself in the foot. 

Why are they even putting such hardline policies on the table that will only infuriate citizens and support extremist, anti-EU political parties, when it is clear from the outset that more than two thirds of the European Council members would never support it?

And that is without even considering the position of the common-sense gatekeeper and Europe’s only anti-tobacco success story: a smoke-free Sweden that will never accept this nonsense.