The Fears of Tobacconists are Justified: Media Leaks Confirm the EU's Willingness to Destroy the Sector

BRUSSELS, September 11, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

As reported by media, the regulation on tobacco products that the European Commission is intending to adopt confirms the fears of the European retailers in the aftermath of their mobilization of September 6th.

"As shown by the market trends in countries where those measures have already been implemented, consumption won't decrease but will shift towards the illegal market", said CEDT Chairman Giovanni Risso.

The same leaks point out that the proposed policies are questionable also from a legal point of view, as - reportedly - the European Commission legal services are raising their brows about the convenience of some of the measures we strongly oppose.

"On behalf of more than 700,000 European retailers and over 1,500,000 workers at points of sale, -says Risso -  I restate that the current proposal by the Commission will lead to more than 250,000 job losses in the short term, and will also threaten at least 900,000 jobs in tobacco retail in the EU; it will result in an additional over 10 billion Euros in tax revenue losses on top of the 10 billion lost today as a result of the illicit tradeand bring more than 72 billion cigarettes annually over to the black market overnight; and it will do nothing to reduce smoking rates."

With a similar proposal, even unintentionally (although we should presume awareness from our European institutions), EU Commission will end up handing over a major part of the market to smugglers and counterfeiters. In this regard, declarations about product traceability appear meaningless. Therefore instead of mentioning biased and old documents, we ask those who are making such declarations to better examine OLAF and European Customs documentation and to show us how to trace counterfeit products.

In spite of what certain anti-tobacco NGOs say instrumentally and with almost defamatory declarations, the majority of tobacconists base their primary income on the sale of tobacco products. Also, mentioning reports created 15 years ago is unfair and unfounded as well as unfounded are the declarations of the same NGOs about European retailers' actions during the public consultation and during the mobilization organized on September 6th. Obviously, who is self-serving disregards the value of direct democracy (for the sake of the intellectual honesty, it should be asked which industries are supporting these NGOs and if such entities have a business interest in making people quit smoking or if they prefer to have smokers who periodically buy their products).

"We believe -says Risso- that the objective of protecting public health is obviously to be shared by all our members who are convinced that only informed adults who choose to smoke should be the priority of the future. We therefore ask ourselves why measures which have proven to be effective without destroying an entire economic sector are not being considered by the Commission nor by the very active ONG."

The laughable objective of the review proposal estimated for 2027 (!) is a reduction of smoking rates of a maximum of 0.5% (!). Information and education campaigns implemented in cooperation with tobacconists and parental organizations focused on their goals instead of witch-hunts, have brought smoking rates down in certain Member States and quite satisfying results in less than 3 years.

"In summary -recalls Risso- 85,000 European citizens, a lot of them tobacconists, have already expressed their views freely and autonomously against the extreme policies that the European Commission is proposing but their voices have been ignored. A reduction of legal sales due to an increase in illicit trade, the reduction in cigarette price as the only element to compete resulting from erasing all differences among products, will cause an increase in smoking rates and a decrease in fiscal revenues, together with the closure of millions of points of sale that will be unable to face the increasing costs that these measures will impose, such as changes in the shops as well as increased costs in personnel to manage a sale process that will become more cumbersome."

In a nutshell, fewer jobs, fewer small family businesses, fewer fiscal revenues, fewer quality controls on products, more contraband and counterfeit and, finally, more smokers. This is the result that already today we can envision if the proposed measures were to become a reality.

SOURCE C.E.D.T. Confederation Europeenne des Detaillants en Tabac