When I wrote earlier this week that the European Parliament should reject the Commission’s plan to ban vaping in all public spaces across Europe, I did not expect them to take my advice. But, as it turned out, wiser heads prevailed. Parliament voted with a majority of 148 to reject its own proposed resolution welcoming the Commission’s proposal. But, as always with such a diverse chamber, it’s not that simple.
From what I understand from various conversations and from the voting records posted online, it was parties on the political left, whose preferences tend towards banning things they don’t like, who saw off the Resolution in the end.
Two amendments authored by the Conservatives (ECR) and supported by the Christian Democrats (EPP) made the point that safer nicotine products are safer than smoking. For the Socialists, the hard Left and the Greens, this was too far. It seems that none of these three groups was willing to vote for a report that said things about relative risk that are objectively true, despite the rest of the proposed Resolution heaping praise on the Commission’s proposal to ban vaping everywhere, as they had wanted from the start.
And so, in the end it was only two thirds or so of the EPP Group that approved the report. All the groups to both the left and the right of EPP voted against, with a few rebels on either side.
But you wouldn’t have understood that dynamic from the fallout. The EPP’s spokesman on Health, Peter Liese, immediately called for the European Commission to withdraw its proposal entirely (as things stand, it can and probably will still be passed by Member States without the backing of Parliament).
"The European Commission should withdraw and thoroughly revise the proposal for a Council recommendation on smoke- and aerosol-free environments”, Liese said in a statement shortly after the vote.
“The proposal is highly controversial and could strengthen Euroskepticism”, he continued, echoing a point I’ve been making on this site for months now, and which was also echoed by Matthias Dophner, owner of German media empire Axel Springer.
“Worse, I find it troubling that the Commission equates e-cigarettes with traditional cigarettes” Liese continued. “A heavy smoker who switches from smoking to vaping is doing something positive for their health".
And so we are at an impasse. EPP 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 result also leaves hard questions for the Commission itself. 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.
That won’t bother the “true believers” at DG SANTE, whose prohibitionist culture war knows no bounds. Their proposal will look like an NGO’s wet dream whatever happens; but that proposal will need political sign off from the very top of the Commission. So what will the Berlaymont decide to do?
Perhaps they should read my article too. Quite apart from there being unambiguous scientific evidence that vaping reduces smoking related disease, there are political considerations at play. Banning most vapes won’t be popular with the people who use them, and that’s a lot of people. Those people will, rightly, shake their fists at Brussels institutions that are already disliked by many across the continent.
And since there’s no public health benefit to offset such political risk, they’ll need to answer a very simple question: why take it?
