Further delay for tobacco reforms

Date: 27/06/1996

By Michael Mann

NEW proposals to reform the Union's tobacco production sector, originally due out two months ago, will not be ready now until September at the earliest.

Plans to review the changes made to the tobacco regime in 1992 have been put on hold partly because of the Commission's preoccupation with the beef crisis and its aftermath.

But it has also proved impossible to get agreement - even within the agricultural services - on what approach to take.

“The Commission has not decided what to do with the report and ultimately it has got to be a political decision by Commissioner Fischler,” said an official in Directorate-General VI (agriculture).

The delays within the agriculture department are causing headaches for DGV (health and social affairs), which has had to put on hold a paper prepared as a follow-up to its 1989 recommendation on ways to cut down on smoking.

Health Commissioner Pádraig Flynn has made no secret of his wish to limit the harm caused by smoking, but is aware of the apparent dichotomy between support for tobacco production on the one hand and anti-smoking campaigns on the other.

“The possibility must be there for alternatives to be provided for those producers who would be seriously commercially affected. There has been a reduction in tobacco subsidies, but I would like to see them eliminated as quickly as possible,” says Flynn.

But meaningful adjustments to the tobacco support system - which is worth about 1 billion ecu a year - look unlikely.

DGVI officials remain tight-lipped, but consultation meetings have revealed general satisfaction with the way the regime is operating.

European farmers' lobbies COPA and COGECA also claim the 1992 changes were “relatively satisfactory”, although they “resolutely denounce the unfair confusion created by the anti-tobacco lobby, which alleges that the disposal of tobacco production in Europe will reduce or even stop tobacco consumption in this continent”. They continue to stress that many tobacco-growing regions have few alternative sources of income and claim that reductions in production under the current quota system have merely increased the quantity of overseas tobacco imported into the Union.

Calling for substantial increases in premiums for growing tobacco, as well as measures to improve quality and the balance between supply and demand, COPA/COGECA stress that subsidies for tobacco production have absolutely nothing to do with levels of consumption.

This view is accepted by Flynn's officials, who are nevertheless frustrated at delays in their work while DGVI sorts out its internal difficulties.

Officials stress that the Commission was still able to adopt its recommendation on smoking in 1989, even though its subsidy system was firmly in place and supported by the majority of the Commissioners.

“If the reform proposals continue to slip indefinitely, we might have to go ahead with our initiative anyway,” said one of Flynn's officials.

Apart from analysing measures taken by each member state since 1989 to combat smoking, Flynn is looking at ways to further reduce cigarette consumption, including fiscal measures and the long-stalled proposals for a tobacco advertising ban.

Luk Joossens, a consultant for the European Union Against Cancer, claims that none of the aims of the tobacco regime have been achieved.

Not only are EU farmers producing uneconomical varieties, but subsidies are a very inefficient provider of income, he maintains.

Joossens points out that, perversely, it is the varieties produced in northern Europe which have more economic value.

Although southern member states are the major producers, it is not widely known that Germany, Belgium and even Austria have small tobacco-growing sectors. Austria's annual production quota for this year is 600 tonnes of the EU quota of 350,600 tonnes.