Delay over cigarette warnings sparks row

Date: 10/04/03

By Karen Carstens

THE European Commission has come under fire from members of the European Parliament for delaying the introduction of graphic pictorial health warnings on cigarette packs by up to two years.

British MEP Chris Davies has lambasted the EU executive for the delay. "If I didn't prefer to use parliamentary language, I would describe the Commission's excuses for these delays as utter bull," he said. "Already the Commission is in breach of EU law by failing to produce the guidelines in time and the reasons are unacceptable."

A key aspect of the June 2001 Sale of Tobacco Products Directive was the right for member states to follow the example of Canada in including "shock pictures" - for example of blackened lungs or pregnant mothers taking a puff - on cigarette packets. It required the Commission to produce guidelines for the voluntary measure by 31 December 2002, a deadline it has missed. But the Commission claims there has been no bureaucratic bungling on the matter. "It is just now being finalised," said Thorsten Münch, a spokesman for Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner David Byrne. "We expect to have the recommendations ready by the end of May."

Moreover, he added, there is no rush because the Commission would rather see the pictorial warnings "gradually phased in" at least a year after consumers have become used to new written health warnings that member states must introduce by 30 September.

These written warnings, which the Netherlands has already started using, must cover 30% of the front and 40% of the back of all cigarette packets.

The pictorial warnings, however, will be voluntary. For each of 14 EU-approved categories of written warnings, such as "smoking kills", the Commission will select "three or four appropriate pictures" and put them on an internet database available to national health ministries to use as they see fit, Münch explained. "The measure is voluntary, but member states can only use the Commission-approved photographs," he added.

Davies was reacting to comments made last month, by a Commission representative to the Parliament's environment and public health committee, that the shock images would not be ready before summer 2004 because "it requires a lot of technical experts to assess and select pictures".

Davies said: "A competent private design agency could prepare these guidelines on cigarette packets design within a month."

Yet according to Münch, "it was never our intention to introduce the pictures immediately".

The European Commission has come under fire from members of the European Parliament for delaying the introduction of graphic pictorial health warnings on cigarette packs by up to two years.