The WHO warns of the slowdown in European anti-smoking policies

While the European Union has committed to achieving a "tobacco-free generation" by 2040, the new WHO Europe 2025 report[1] This highlights a worrying slowdown in European momentum. The main directives governing tobacco regulation—on products (TPD), taxation (TTD), and advertising (TAD)—are significantly behind schedule in their revision. These delays undermine the coherence of the European regulatory framework and the EU's ability to respond to the explosion of new nicotine products, threatening the achievement of the objectives set out in the Europe Against Cancer plan.

A legislative framework that is losing momentum

The WHO Europe report recalls that the European Union has long been considered a global model for tobacco regulation. From the early 2000s, it had put in place an ambitious legal framework – from the Tobacco Advertising Directive (Tobacco Advertising Directive, 2003/33/EC) to the Tobacco Products Directive (Tobacco Products Directive, TPD, 2014/40/EU), through the Tobacco Tax Directive (Tobacco Taxation Directive, TTD, 2011/64/EU). Together, these texts formed the basis of a coherent framework, aligned with the obligations of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), allowing for the imposition of graphic health warnings, the prohibition of flavorings, the banning of advertising and the setting of minimum levels of taxation.

However, the lack of adaptation of the system over the past decade has led to a weakened system showing signs of strain. The Europe Plan Against Cancer, adopted in 2021, aimed to strengthen this framework through a series of revisions designed to adapt European legislation to new nicotine products and evolving usage patterns. Five major projects were announced: the revision of the TPD to generalize plain packaging and a complete ban on flavorings; the overhaul of the TTD to harmonize the taxation of tobacco products and integrate the taxation of emerging products; the updating of the Advertising and Sponsorship Directive (ASD) to cover digital content and social media with their cross-border dimension; the revision of the Council Recommendation on smoke-free environments; and the strengthening of the application of the transparency principle enshrined in Article 5.3 of the FCTC.

However, none of these structural reforms have progressed as planned. The proposal to revise the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD), expected in 2022, was only published in the summer of 2025, after several postponements due to disagreements between Member States and intense lobbying by the tobacco industry. As for the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD), the Commission commissioned only a preliminary evaluation report in 2024, with no clear prospect of revision before 2026. Finally, the Tobacco Products Directive (TAD) has remained unchanged for over twenty years, even though advertising for nicotine products has shifted massively to digital platforms, largely escaping current regulations.

These delays are not insignificant: they reflect a general slowdown in the European political engine for tobacco control, at the very moment when the market is undergoing profound transformation. New products—e-cigarettes, heated tobacco, nicotine pouches, herbal-infused sticks—are proliferating. Lacking an updated framework, tobacco manufacturers are using these products to exploit regulatory loopholes: some evade tobacco taxes, others circumvent flavor bans or labeling requirements, while online advertising remains difficult to control.

This legislative inertia directly threatens the coherence of European law. It fuels increasing fragmentation between Member States, some having adopted advanced national measures – such as the ban on flavourings for vaping products in the Netherlands or the specific taxation of these products in Germany – while others retain minimalist frameworks.

The WHO report emphasizes that this slowness stems not only from institutional complexity, which is not new, but primarily from pressure exerted by the tobacco and nicotine industry, which is intensifying its lobbying efforts with the Commission's directorates-general and Member States. While WHO Europe does not explicitly address this point, investigations by journalists link this tobacco industry interference to a broader strategy aimed at sowing discord among Member States and weakening the European Union, which it sees as a threat to its interests. These actions by the tobacco industry over the years have contributed to delaying the revision processes and diluting the initial proposals. Consequently, the Commission has been forced to repeatedly postpone the presentation of its legislative package, undermining the credibility of European leadership in implementing the FCTC.

In short, while the European Union has a solid historical framework, the lack of substantial revisions for over a decade undermines its effectiveness in the face of a rapidly changing market. This legislative "standstill," denounced by WHO Europe, risks jeopardizing the progress made in prevention and youth protection, and delaying the achievement of the goal of a tobacco-free Europe by 2040.

Delays that jeopardize the objectives of Europe Plan Against Cancer

The Europe Against Cancer plan adopted in 2021 placed the fight against tobacco use at the heart of its prevention strategy, setting a historic goal: to achieve a smoking prevalence of less than 5 per 100,000 smokers by 2040—a "tobacco-free generation" across the continent. However, data presented in the WHO Europe 2025 report show that the accumulated delays in revising these key texts are directly jeopardizing the European Union's trajectory.

In 2022, 26.5% of European adults still smoked—compared to 30.8% in 2010—representing a relative decrease of only 14.1% in twelve years. This decline remains far below the WHO's target of reducing smoking by 30% by 2025. At this rate, the European Union will not reach its target of 5% of smokers before 2055 at the earliest, fifteen years after the deadline set in the European plan. Disparities between countries are also considerable: smoking prevalence varies from 16.2% in Denmark to 39.5% in Bulgaria, with rates exceeding 30% in several Central and Eastern European countries. These disparities reveal profound differences in the application of the measures of the FCTC and the 2014 European directive on tobacco products, but also in terms of taxation, advertising bans and support for smoking cessation.

The report further shows that tobacco remains the leading behavioral factor in premature mortality from non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in the European Union, responsible for 17.3 million premature deaths from NCDs in 2021 — twice the share of poor diet or alcohol consumption.

An explosion of new products that is blurring prevention policies

Legislative delays are also explained by the difficulty of adapting regulations to the proliferation of new nicotine products, which directly threaten the progress made over the past twenty years. According to 2024 data from the ESPAD network, nearly a quarter of 15- to 16-year-olds (24%) report vaping, compared to 13% in 2019, with peaks of 36% in Poland, 32% in Croatia, and 30% in Slovenia. In all the countries studied, teenage girls now outnumber boys in using e-cigarettes, reversing historical smoking trends. This rapid increase is due to the availability of flavored products, attractive packaging, and massive advertising on social media—all aspects still insufficiently addressed by current European legislation, due to the lack of a revision of the Tobacco Products Directive and the associated advertising directive.

Oral products such as nicotine pouches and flavored herbal cigarettes also escape regulation at the European level, even though they may already be widely consumed in some Member States. For example, nicotine pouches are used by more than 10% of 13- to 15-year-olds in Bulgaria and 8% in the Czech Republic, according to youth surveys cited by WHO Europe. These products, which do not always contain tobacco, are not subject to the TPD or TTD, creating a regulatory loophole that the industry exploits to target young people.

Persistent tax disparities that maintain the accessibility of tobacco

The WHO report reiterates that taxation remains the most effective tool for reducing tobacco consumption, but the European Union suffers from a lack of harmonization. In 2024, taxes represented more than 75% of the price of a pack in 20 Member States, but only 50 to 60% in several Eastern European countries, where cigarettes remain up to three times cheaper than in Ireland or France. Thus, the price of a pack of 20 cigarettes reached 22.43 international dollars.[2] In Ireland, the price is $6.82, compared to $6.82 in Bulgaria—a difference that cannot be explained by income disparities and perpetuates tobacco tourism and unequal access to harmful products. Furthermore, taxes on e-cigarettes and heated products remain low, representing less than 25% of the retail price in most Member States, due to the lack of a revised TTD to include these products.

A political emergency to restore European leadership

The WHO report calls for immediate action to restore the European Union's position as a global leader in the fight against tobacco. The EU, which played a leading role in negotiating and implementing the FCTC (Front for the Control of Tobacco Control), is now seeing its influence wane in favor of countries like Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, which have adopted stricter policies on new nicotine products.

Delays in revising directives have created a disconnect between legislation and market developments, paving the way for new circumvention strategies by the industry. Manufacturers are exploiting the slow pace of European processes to flood the market with "tobacco-free" or "synthetic nicotine-based" products, presented as lower-risk alternatives. This fait accompli approach, coupled with a health-focused narrative, muddles public health messages, weakens the perception of nicotine's dangers, and delays or even attempts to prevent the adoption of protective measures.

The report again highlights the role of tobacco industry interference in this political deadlock. Reports from the European Ombudsman have pointed to a lack of transparency in the exchanges between the European Commission and industry representatives, in violation of Article 5.3 of the FCTC, which mandates the protection of public tobacco control policies from commercial interests.

To restore its leadership, the Union must reaffirm a clear and ambitious strategy:

• Revise the TPD, TTD and TAD without delay to cover all nicotine products, ban flavourings and harmonize taxation.
• Ensure transparency in decision-making processes, by strictly applying the provisions of the FCTC relating to the prevention of conflicts of interest and ensuring that interactions with the tobacco sector, including new products, are limited to what is strictly necessary.
• Strengthen coordination between Member States through joint public health and market control actions.
• Speaking with one voice at the international level, particularly at the COP11 of the CCLAT, in order to defend a European approach integrating health and environment, including the fight against plastic pollution from filters.

The WHO concludes that only swift and concerted action will enable the European Union to regain its pioneering role in public health. Without this impetus, it risks not only missing the goal of a tobacco-free generation, but also seeing twenty years of progress erode in favor of an increasingly uncontrolled, or even uncontrollable, nicotine market.

©Generation Without Tobacco

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[1] Two decades of the implementation of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in the European Union: progress, challenges and the road ahead. Copenhagen: WHO Regional Office for Europe; 2025. License: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.

[2] The international dollar is a fictitious currency based on purchasing power parity (PPP), which is used to compare living standards and real wealth between countries by neutralizing differences in prices and exchange rates.