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France’s National Assembly has approved legislation that will impose restrictions on vaping in public places and advertising of e-cig products, as well as enabling the French government to transpose the EU’s Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) by decree.
Health minister Marisol Touraine’s proposals to modernise the health system – which also introduce plain packaging for tobacco products – had been held up by a long disagreement between the Assembly and the Senate.
However, although the legislation now passed will start to bring vapour products into the tobacco regulatory regime, there is still no official draft proposal to comprehensively implement the TPD’s requirements in France.
Meanwhile, the shape of Germany’s TPD implementation is also becoming clearer, with two drafts of legislation published last week: one a full proposal for TPD transposition, and the other regulating related issues such as non-nicotine products.
Among the policy choices made by German authorities are equivalence between nicotine-containing and non-nicotine products, and tough restrictions on advertising. However, they appear to have opted not to prohibit cross-border sales.
The TPD must be transposed into the domestic legislation of all EU member states by May of next year. But as our recent infographic shows, progress in achieving this varies dramatically across the continent.
What This Means: While the broad outlines of TPD transposition across the European Union have always been clear, insofar as many of the directive’s measures are mandatory, there is still plenty of scope for variance that could have significant impact on the industry and its customers. ECigIntelligence will publish a major report on the French regulatory scene shortly and also bring our subscribers more detail of the German drafts.
– ECigIntelligence staff
Photo: NASA
