France, Germany move forward on TPD transposition

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

Barnaby Page

Editorial director

Before joining ECigIntelligence in early 2014 as one of its first employees, Barnaby had a 30-year career as a reporter and editor for newspapers, magazines and online services, working in Canada, the US and the Middle East as well as his current British location. He has edited publications covering fields including technology and the advertising industry, and was launch editor of the first large daily online news service in the British regional media. Barnaby also writes on classical music and film for a number of publications. Barnaby manages the editorial and reporting teams and works closely with the analyst teams, to ensure that all content meets high standards of quality and relevance. He also writes for the site occasionally, mostly on science-related issues, and is a member of the Association of British Science Writers.