For those of you most familiar with the modus operandi of the EU institutions, this won’t come as much of a surprise. Back in March 2017, the Commission published the results of a public consultation on whether or not e-cigs should be subject to a tobacco-style excise.
Naturally, the overwhelming answer was no. With the largest group of respondents being individuals. Naturally, being the EU, they weren’t particularly satisfied with such a response and all went quiet.
The European Union doesn’t have much love for tobacco at all, in fact it does everything it can to make life as miserable as possible for those they think are daft enough to smoke. Not content with pushing up prices on all forms of tobacco in a vain effort to get people to quit, the EU has undertaken a massive regulatory campaign to make it impossible or next to impossible for reduced risk products to be made available.
As part of the implementation of the Tobacco Products Directive - 2014/40/EU - and specifically Article 20, the section that relates specifically to e-cigarettes the European Regulatory Science on Tobacco (EUREST - what can I say, the EU does alphabet soup better than the Americans) - the EU wanted a report on the “potential risks” of the product. To be fair, that is a laudable goal considering the use of the product.
The hypocrisy is rife within the EU (not such a great shock it has to be said), but it is such a glaring “we don’t know what the fuck we are doing” type that I simply couldn’t resist putting finger to key. Ya see, as any business knows, distance selling is one of many keys to success. More often than not, products and services are sold to other territories. This takes distance selling to a different pot.
There is a strap-line from HM Revenue & Customs - “tax doesn’t have to be taxing” - yet despite their best efforts, if you really want to wade through the system, you are going to have to employ someone with letters after their name. The proles don’t really stand a chance of navigating the endless forms, cross referencing and waiting. Not to mention there are certain rules that need to be followed with regards to things like wage slips, P60 (end of year stuff for UK employees).
Whenever there’s some “new research” being touted in the media-news-space, I often find myself switching automatically into newspeak as 99 times out of 100, what is written on these online media places has little or no bearing on what is being said. (hint look up doublethink). Tracking down the cited paper was pretty darn easy (for once) and it is currently open access - which is rare considering that it was published in the journal Tobacco Control - you know, the subsidiary of the BMJ variant.
As the date draws closer for actual implementation of the voted-in Tobacco Products Directive, EU Member States are producing their interpretation of the Directive. Unlike the UK which has been decidedly light-touch, though how light-touch remains to be seen, Member States have taken to adding a bit extra - i.e. “Gold Plating” the Directive which only serves to make it worse. Belgium are going to be charging 4,000 Euro per notification which is a disastrous amount for smaller businesses to bear.
December 23rd 2015, a date that has been ingrained in my brain since the Totally Wicked Legal Challenge was heard in the Court of Justice of the European Union on October 1st. As the old saying goes - “hope for the best, prepare for the worst” - as many people suggested that the challenge appeared to be very strong, but it seems that many folks were content to hinge everything on Totally Wicked being 110% successful.
As many of you will no doubt be aware, the UK implementation of the Tobacco Products Directive is coming whether we like it or not. September 3rd saw the closure of the official public consultation on the majority of the implementation regulations. Today saw the publication of additional ‘guidance’ under Article 20 section 5. Specifically all about the advertising portion of Article 20.
Article 20(5) of the Tobacco Products Directive 2014/40/EC requires EU member states to introduce restrictions on the advertising of electronic cigarettes.
There are currently 73 MEPs in the UK. Elected every five years (although I don’t actually remember the last MEP election). Being involved in Europe means the UK needs a lot of bodies to “fairly” represent the UK in matters being discussed in European committees, councils and so forth.
According to the Euro Parliament (Office of the UK) website, the region I live in has 7 representatives. 7!
Patrick O’Flynn (UKIP) Vicky Ford (Conservative) Richard Howitt (Labour) Stuart Agnew (UKIP) Geoffrey Van Orden (Conservative) Tim Aker (UKIP) David Campbell Bannerman (Conservative) What do the MEPs actually do?
