Members of the European Parliament will on Tuesday (8 October) give their verdict on one of the most intensive legislative battles witnessed in this parliamentary term – over tighter restrictions on tobacco marketing and labelling. The dossier, which was at the heart of the resignation of John Dalli as a European commissioner amid cash-for-influence allegations, is expected to attract an army of lobbyists to Strasbourg next week. The vote was initially scheduled for last month but was delayed after accusations of pressure by the pro-tobacco lobby, and now time is running out.

The three most contentious areas are the size of pictorial warnings on cigarette packets, how to regulate e-cigarettes and whether or not to give the rapporteur a mandate to negotiate with.

The Parliament’s environment committee voted in July to support the European Commission’s proposal that 75% of packets should be covered by a warning. But the centre-right EPP group has put forward an amendment to change this to 50%. Forty MEPs have put forward a compromise of 65%.

The committee also supported the Commission’s idea to designate e-cigarettes, currently unregulated in several member states, as pharmaceuticals for the purposes of market authorisation. The ALDE group of Liberals in the Parliament wants to make them subject to the same procedures as tobacco. Parliament sources suggest that this ALDE amendment will succeed.

There is disagreement within the centre-right over whether the MEPs should vote to give a mandate for negotiations to centre-left rapporteur Linda McAvan if they are unhappy with the result of the vote. Failure to give a mandate would drag the legislation into a second reading, making it unlikely to be concluded before the end of this Parliament.

“Regardless of the text that is agreed, if there is no mandate given at the end of voting, then there is no tobacco products directive. It would be technically impossible for this file to be finished before the elections,” said Florence Berteletti Kemp, director of campaign group Smoke Free Partnership.

Paschal Donohoe, Ireland’s new European affairs minister, met McAvan this week to discuss ways to ensure an early agreement between Parliament and Council before next year’s European elections. Ireland retains a leading interest in the tobacco file after guiding the issue during its presidency of the Council of Ministers in the first half of this year. “I hope the European Parliament will give the rapporteur a mandate to open negotiations on the tobacco products directive,” he said after the meeting.

Lobbying issues

The intensive lobbying by the tobacco industry over the legislation has become the focus of attention over the past month as leaked documents showed its sheer scale.

Internal documents from American tobacco giant Philip Morris International, seen by European Voice, suggest that this company alone has used 161 lobbyists, who met 233 MEPs – 31% of the Parliament – from the start of 2011 to June 2012. About half of EPP and ECR MEPs met the company’s lobbyists during that time. A slide presentation from 2011 identified delaying the legislation as a possible way to defeat it.

Last month Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), accused the tobacco lobby of using a “massive army” to “sabotage” the EU vote. She suggested that the lobbyists were trying to delay the legislation until the start of the Greek presidency of the EU on 1 January, hoping that Greece would shelve the directive because it was more tobacco-friendly than the preceding presidencies of Ireland and Lithuania. She also noted that Philip Morris is opening a European distribution centre in Greece.

“Here industry is counting on the historical pattern where economic and commercial interests trump public health concerns,” she told the conference.

Philip Morris has denied its lobbying has been improper and said it has a right to make its views known. “The argument that we should remain silent in the face of a proposal that directly concerns us — and on which we have facts and improvement ideas to share – is illogical,” said the company’s EU region president, Drago Azinovic.

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