From 17 to 22 November, more than 1,400 government, international organisations and civil society delegates convened in Geneva to advance the World Health Organisation’s global tobacco control agenda. As the latest Conference of the Parties under the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, COP11 took on some of the treaty’s greatest challenges yet, from the smoke-free generation ambition to the threat posed by new nicotine products.
While the COP11 negotiations carried high expectations, the tobacco industry launched an aggressive lobbying campaign in the conference’s lead-up to dilute outcomes.Tellingly, the EU failed to reach a common position on tobacco and nicotine regulation ahead of the summit, with this breakdown largely driven by Big Tobacco’s influence.
Even so, COP11 and the ensuing MOP4 on the illicit trade offer the global tobacco control community a vital platform to push for EU reforms fully aligned with the WHO FCTC agenda. Only robust regulation – including higher taxes, expanded smoke-free spaces, advertising bans, plain packaging, independent traceability and country delivery quotas – can curb industry obstruction and protect public health from the entirely-preventable tobacco scourge.
COP11 exposes EU’s tobacco-driven divide
Ahead of COP11, the WHO issued a firm position note underscoring that all tobacco and nicotine products – whether “traditional” or new – pose health risks, and that “harm reduction” must not become a convenient pretext for weakening regulation. The organisation notably urged governments to implement the full suite of measures contained in the WHO FCTC framework.
Despite the Danish EU Council Presidency’s repeated efforts, the EU entered COP11 without a unified, pro-WHO stance. Consequently, in a historic first, Brussels did not hold voting rights at the summit – however, this apparent setback conceals a genuine source of hope. While the bloc has previously adopted common COP positions, this unified front was traditionally backed by a Commission strongly-influenced by Big Tobacco lobbying. This year, the EU’s most progressive countries encouragingly refused to stand down, creating a long-awaited opening for meaningful change.
Certain EU member states – led by France, Belgium and the Netherlands – are pushing for the EU to champion world-leading tobacco control standards, yet many countries in Southern and Eastern Europe – including Italy, Romania and Bulgaria – as well as Sweden are impeding progress. This latter camp has sharply criticised the European Commission’s proposed tax increases on tobacco and nicotine products, claiming erroneously that harm-reduction alternatives cannot be regulated identically to cigarettes without producing unintended public health or illicit trade consequences.
In total, nine EU member-states formally objected to the Commission’s forward-looking COP11 proposals. The pro-WHO side rightly attributes this obstructionist stance to these countries’ economic dependence on the tobacco industry, which employs tens of thousands and has invested billions in production infrastructure within its ‘allied’ member-states. Indeed, Italy has become a major European centre for heated-tobacco and nicotine-pouch manufacturing, while Romania, Greece and the Czech Republic host significant processing sites for conventional and newer alternative nicotine products.
Tobacco industry’s long history of interference
The economic dependence of several EU member states on Big Tobacco has left the bloc highly exposed to the industry’s lobbying machine, which succeeded in splintering the EU’s regulatory stance in Geneva. This dynamic reflects last month’s warning from the WHO FCTC Secretariat about coordinated industry efforts to undermine COP11’s outcomes. As one EU official astutely noted, the bloc’s disunity effectively became a “testing ground” ahead of the looming battle over Europe’s tobacco rules.
Governments opposed to stronger WHO-compliant standards share the view that the Commission’s push for strict measures at COP11 was indeed an attempt to “test the waters” ahead of the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) revision – expected by 2027 – as well as the recently-launched reform process for the Tobacco Excise Taxation Directive (TED). These long-awaited regulatory reviews, stalled for years by persistent tobacco industry pressure, now represent a rare chance to build a regulatory framework in accordance with the WHO FCTC and Protocol.
Despite ratifying the Protocol in 2016, the EU still operates a tobacco traceability system that contravenes its core requirement of tobacco industry independence. Big Tobacco’s lobbying in Brussels helped secure roles in the system for companies with long-standing industry links, including Swiss firms Inexto, a spin-off from Philip Morris International (PMI) promoting a Codentify-style model that the WHO classifies as an industry “black box;” and Dentsu Tracking, associated with the PMI-developed Codentify via its 2017 acquisition of Blue Infinity. Furthermore, Atos and its sister company Worldline also occupy central roles, despite previously promoting Codentify and the latter receiving payments from the tobacco industry.
As Luk Joossens of Smokefree Partnership recently summarised, the EU’s system clearly falls short of the Protocol, with no guarantee of independence, no public access to its vast data, and no audit reports released. Moreover, this ineffective, industry-shaped system – which costs the EU up to €20 billion in lost tax revenue annually and coincides with the bloc’s rising illicit tobacco flows – continues to provide cover for the parallel trade fuelled by the tobacco industry’s intentional oversupplying of small, low-tax markets such as Luxembourg. Harmonising the TED and TPD reforms with WHO standards would finally disrupt this dynamic by raising taxes in porous jurisdictions and establishing country-level quotas.
What legacy for COP11 and MOP4?
Despite the EU’s disappointing COP11 showing, all is certainly not lost, with the global summit’s legacy – as well as that of the late November’s MOP4 illicit trade summit – still capable of shaping Europe’s next steps. As one EU diplomat noted, WHO decisions may not be legally binding in the Union, but they carry clear political weight: “if it’s on the global table, it will be on the EU table too.” Crucially, with the TPD reform decided by qualified-majority voting, and the opposition bloc still lacking the numbers to derail the process, the WHO-aligned camp stands a strong chance.
In the weeks surrounding COP11, France positioned itself as a central force in Europe’s tobacco control movement, with Paris marshalling a coalition of influential member-states, including Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Ireland, to ensure public health and the integrity of policymaking are no longer be compromised by the tobacco industry. This collective stance is among COP11’s most positive outcomes, reflecting a renewed political willingness for more ambitious measures.
Moving forward, real progress will mean fully incorporating WHO FCTC and Protocol requirements into EU law, from raising taxes on tobacco and new nicotine products and introducing an EU-level country quota mechanism – as advocated by French MP Frédéric Valletoux – to implementing an independent and transparent traceability scheme, as urged by LukJoossens.
As COP11 made clear, the necessary tobacco control tools already exist – what’s needed now is political resolve. With the pro-reform camp gaining momentum and the industry-aligned bloc still too small to block legislation, now is the moment to double down and push for accelerated EU action. By following the WHO’s agenda, Brussels can restore its global tobacco control leadership and achieve its long-term public health goals.
