From Our President: What Will It Take?

 

For years, Europe’s cancer community has urged the EU and its member states to adopt more effective legislation to curb tobacco consumption. But progress has been painfully slow, resulting in thousands of cancer cases that need never have occurred. Will this time be any different?

Tobacco use remains the leading cause of preventable death across the EU, claiming nearly 700,000 lives each year and accounting for about 27% of all cancer cases.

For more than a decade, the Tobacco Taxation Directive has been one of the EU’s main tools to discourage smoking by making tobacco products more expensive. When the Directive was introduced in 2011, it was seen as a bold step forward. The evidence was overwhelming: higher taxes save lives. Every euro of added tax means fewer young people light up, fewer people die prematurely, and fewer health systems strain their budgets treating preventable diseases.

The Directive was intended to prevent countries from undercutting their neighbours with bargain-basement cigarette prices. Every member state had to apply at least a minimum level of tax on tobacco products.

Many countries, however, wanted to move farther and faster and imposed their own much higher taxes. The resulting tax disparities across member states became enormous, from the cheapest (as low as €2.57 per pack in Bulgaria) to the most expensive (as much as €11.37 per pack in Ireland).

So smokers responded by simply crossing into nearby states to buy less expensive cigarettes. Trucks loaded with cut-price cartons rolled across borders every day, and an army of smugglers filled the gaps.

It produced a windfall for tiny countries like Luxembourg. Last year, it raked in €1.2 billion in tobacco sales – even though less than 5% of that tobacco was actually smoked there. Most buyers came from neighbouring countries, attracted by the lower prices: €8 per pack in Luxembourg compared to €10 in the Netherlands and €13 in France.

Meanwhile, a generation of new products has appeared across the continent – vapes, heated tobacco, nicotine pouches – none of which were even imagined when the old rules were written. The result: a messy patchwork of national laws for both companies and consumers to exploit.   

For public-health campaigners, the failure to address the loopholes has been maddening. Raising prices through taxation is the single most effective way to cut smoking rates. It saves more lives, more quickly, than any poster, warning label, or public-awareness campaign. Independent estimates suggest that around 40% of the decline in EU smoking rates over the past decade can be attributed to higher taxes.

Yet because EU tax laws require unanimous agreement, even one resistant government can stall progress for years. And the tobacco lobby knows this. Every delay, every round of quiet lobbying, keeps the price gap wide and sales steady. That’s why efforts to modernise the Directive have stumbled again and again.

Now the European Commission is trying once more. Its proposed new Tobacco Taxation Directive, unveiled in July, would pull vaping and heated tobacco into the same framework as cigarettes, raise minimum tax levels across the board, and tighten the rules on raw tobacco to choke off illicit production. It would also bring fairness to the system so that a smoker in Sofia or Seville pays a similar share of tax for the same product.

But this isn’t just about money. It’s about credibility. Europe has declared its ambition for a ‘tobacco-free generation’ by 2040 – meaning that fewer than 5% of Europeans still smoke. That won’t happen without strong fiscal policy. If the EU cannot close the loopholes that keep tobacco cheap – and quickly – the 2040 goal will be little more than a slogan.

The Directive, in many ways, is a test of Europe’s moral and political will. Can a continent that prides itself on protecting citizens from harmful products allow a market in addiction to flourish? Or will it finally summon the courage to tax tobacco in a way that reflects its true cost to society?

What’s clear is that we need uncompromising political leadership at both the EU and national levels.

This month, the European Cancer Organisation and the Association of European Cancer Leagues wrote to EU finance ministers urging them to support the revised Directive, and earlier in the year we met with the European Commissioner for Health, Olivér Várhelyi, to make the same appeal.

It should be noted that public support for the new Directive is growing. At last count, we had more than 120 national and international organisations backing the initiative. This is now a broad, energised coalition.

Negotiations on the Directive will continue for at least another year. The outcome will determine whether the next generation of Europeans grows up on a continent that treats tobacco as a relic of the past – or one still chained to it.

With very best wishes,

Csaba

Prof. Csaba Dégi