Ireland cracks down on smoking, but will EU ever follow suit?

By Karen Carstens

Date: 01/04/04

KLAUS, a 30-something native of Hamburg, spent several years in a single office with a chainsmoking colleague and an ashtray full of cigarette butts.

The part-time athlete and full-time accountant is not alone among Germans who have endured such close encounters of the secondary smoke kind.

And although the health-conscious non-smoker was unhappy with the arrangement, he just shrugged it off with a 'grin and bear it' attitude, never once complaining to his superiors - something most Americans, Canadians, Israelis, or anyone else used to smoke-free office environments would find just plain unglaublich (unbelievable).

The consensus in the EU's biggest member state, as a commentary in news magazine Der Spiegel once put it, is that every citizen's right to smoke any time, any place is a cornerstone of a democracy that first flickered up when rebels lit up in public during the failed revolution of 1848.

Not so in Ireland, where a ban on smoking in virtually all workplaces, closed public spaces and on public transport came into effect on the stroke of midnight last Sunday (28 March), with fines of up to €3,000 awaiting transgressors.

While similar bans have been imposed on cities and states elsewhere in the world, including in California and New York, Ireland is the first country to impose such a ban nationally.

Some 7,000 people die from smoking-related diseases in Ireland each year from a population of less than four million. A quarter of all adults in the country are regular smokers.

According to anti-smoking group ASH, tobacco kills six times more people in Ireland each year than road accidents, work accidents, drugs, murder, suicide and AIDS combined.

It hailed the legislation as "the health initiative of the century".

Elsewhere in Europe, where smoking has long been tolerated, the mood is also changing.

Non-EU member Norway will introduce a blanket ban on smoking in the workplace on 1 June and the Netherlands has said it aims to do so by the end of this year (but bars and restaurants may be exempt).

Sweden is also looking into such a ban - although it has not set any date yet - and pressure for such a move is mounting from medical groups in the UK, said Edward Riley, information officer at the Brussels-based European Network for Smoking Prevention.

Malta, one of ten countries due to join the EU on 1 May, was going to introduce a ban on smoking in most workplaces in April, but has postponed the move for another six months, he added.

Germany, by contrast, stands out as one of the few northerly nations to stick to the status quo on smoking legislation, with a widespread culture of condoning smoking in public places.

David Byrne, the health and consumer protection commissioner, has criticized the German government for taking an "easygoing" stance on smoking, considering that an estimated 100,000 Germans die of smoking-related diseases every year.

He has also accused Berlin of trying to block a global anti-smoking initiative by the World Health Organization, which is supported by more than 190 nations. Germany also blocked a Commission proposal to ban cigarette advertising across Europe.

Meanwhile, southern member states including Spain, Italy and Greece, also remain resistant to introducing new laws, not just because of an enviable outdoor café culture that makes enjoying a cigarette with a cappuccino less irksome for non-smokers.

France, where numbers have been declining, but 32% still smoke, has introduced a law restricting smoking in bars and restaurants, but this has not been rigorously enforced.

A controversial rise in cigarette taxes last year has probably been more effective.

Riley stressed governments in the EU's 'sunshine belt' have lucrative tobacco industries they want to protect.

"They are totally opposed to people not smoking, because it's bad for their economies," he said.

And herein lies the irony of any anti-smoking efforts at EU level: even as they step up their war against tobacco consumption, EU officials admit to an embarrassing anomaly in their policies, which encourage tobacco production.

Under pressure from Greek, Spanish, French and Italian farmers, the EU hands out some €1.3 billion annually in subsidies to European tobacco growers.

At the same time, Byrne, an Irishman, has said he would like to see the experiment ongoing in his country mirrored throughout the bloc.

But, with Byrne uncertain to be reappointed as commissioner, Riley says that "it's hard to know what will happen next".

Still, he added, "whoever comes into that directorate- general won't be able to avoid any contact with the issue".

Byrne announced last September that he was exploring ways to impose an EU-wide ban on workplace smoking, both to protect non-smokers and to bring the number of smokers in Europe - 34% of the population - closer to the US level of 23%.

The EU has no authority to ban smoking as such, but it can - through health and safety measures - legislate to protect non-smokers from the effects of passive smoking at work.

Byrne's spokeswoman Beate Gminder, said that while the commissioner has suggested that a ban similar to the Irish one could be useful across the EU, he does differentiate between offices and other workplaces on the one hand, and bars and restaurants on the other.

"This often gets lost in translation [in the press]," she said. "But he does realize that the Irish formula may not work everywhere. Bars and restaurants differ because they serve a separate 'entertainment function'," Gminder added.

This may turn out to be a good thing, as an EU-wide Irish-style crack down would surely stoke Eurosceptic fires.

An EU-administered central database, featuring graphic images of blackened lungs and other effects of smoking - which member states can voluntarily slap onto cigarette packs to scare off potential smokers, along with mandatory verbal warnings - is seen as a lot less drastic a measure.

It attempts to nip the problem in the bud by preventing nicotine addiction in the first place, a good starting point.

The pictorial warnings have already been successful in Canada. The EU hopes they will also stop people getting hooked in the first place in Europe - if member states, including the accession countries, where smoking rates are even higher, decide to use them.

Such prevention strategies have so far not been widespread in EU member states and, as one Canadian commentator put it: "I don't think they can suddenly turn round and inform all bar-going adult smokers that they'll have to make a radical lifestyle change: either stop smoking or stop going out.

"That's the sort of crazy ruling that revolutions and rebellions are made of. If the EU has a death wish, this is an excellent way to go about making it happen."

Overall, though, it seems likely that any such smouldering plan would be stubbed out in the ashtray of history.

Commission ban could run out of puff

A BAN on smoking in European Commission buildings, due to come into effect on 1 May, could prove difficult to enforce, with few staff having signed up to programmes the EU executive has put forward in order to help them kick the habit.

"We want to give a transitional period for all of us who want to quit smoking," Reijo Kemppinen, the Commission's chief spokesman, said last July.

Staff would be given ten months to stop lighting up, with smokers offered medical advice and courses on how to quit, he added.

But Eric Mamer, another Commission spokesman, this week told European Voice that the programmes are still ongoing, but have not met with huge success.

"First you've got information which is disseminated [to help people quit] and, second, you've got the people who've taken advantage of that - but the numbers are not enormous," he said, adding that they are not even in the hundreds.

Mamer conceded further that, although the Commission held a conference on kicking the habit in late March, it was attended by just two dozen people.

Some ten people have taken advantage of a long-term therapy programme and two groups of around ten each were in shorter therapy courses.

"And we will continue to provide information and support for those who wish to receive it," he said.

The ban will apply to all Commission buildings, including cafeterias, which are spread among several EU buildings across Brussels and in Luxembourg.

It will not, however, include the European Parliament or the Council of Ministers' building, where smoking will still be permitted in certain areas.

http://ec.europa.eu/comm/health/ph_determinants/life_style/Tobacco/tobacco_en.htm http://ec.europa.eu/comm/health/ph_determinants/life_style/Tobacco/tobacco_en.htm

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