The European Union is preparing one of the most drastic measures in its recent history: the prohibition of cigarette filters and electronic cigarettes. The draft forms part of the EU’s position for the upcoming World Health Organization (WHO) tobacco control conference (COP11), scheduled for November 17–22 in Geneva.
But beyond the sanitary or environmental narrative, the plan represents a new attempt by Brussels to concentrate fiscal and regulatory powers at the expense of the Member States.
The proposal, drafted under the supervision of the von der Leyen Commission, does not emerge from internal democratic debate but from a desire to align with the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). Specifically, the EU document, dated October 7, 2025, urges European countries to “restrict or prohibit the sale of electronic nicotine systems, heated tobacco, and nicotine pouches,” treating them as a threat equivalent to traditional tobacco.
What appears to be a technical step is, in reality, the transfer of Europe’s regulatory sovereignty to an international agency with no democratic legitimacy. Brussels not only intends to sign commitments on behalf of the Member States but also to incorporate them automatically into EU law through the forthcoming revision of the Tobacco Products Directive.
In practice, this would mean that decisions taken in Geneva offices could become binding bans in Madrid, Rome, or Warsaw—without parliamentary debate or national impact assessment.
The EU Council justifies the proposal by claiming that filters are “one of the most polluting wastes on the planet” and that their elimination would help meet climate goals. Yet this narrative — a mix of public health rhetoric and institutional environmentalism — serves as a pretext for enforcing an economic and fiscal control agenda.
In parallel, the European Commission is developing two key instruments: the Tobacco Excise Directive (TED) and the Tobacco Excise Duty on Raw Tobacco (TEDOR). Together, they would allow Brussels to collect up to 15% of national excise tax revenues directly and raise duties by up to 900% on certain products. If adopted, it would mark the first time the EU appropriates a traditional fiscal power of the Member States.
Thus, the so-called “anti-tobacco crusade” becomes a vehicle for re-centralising authority and financing the EU’s bureaucratic machinery under the guise of public health.
Behind this offensive lies a network of NGOs funded by the European Commission itself, acting as amplifiers for WHO policies. Groups such as the Smoke-Free Partnership, the European Cancer Organisation, and the European Respiratory Society employ more than 30 registered lobbyists in Brussels and spend over €2 million annually pressuring EU institutions to “follow WHO recommendations.”
The mechanism is well known: Brussels funds these organisations, they in turn demand that EU law be aligned with the WHO, and the Commission presents their demands as a “civil society consensus.”A closed feedback loop of influence, where citizens pay to lose sovereignty.
The same formula has been used for decades to justify policies on climate change, mass immigration, gender ideology, and other supranational agendas.
If enforced, the new regulation would deal a direct blow to over 80,000 European tobacco producers, mainly in Italy, Greece, Spain, and Poland, as well as to tens of thousands of small shops and tobacconists dependent on the trade, while strengthening third countries such as Morocco or China.
But the harm would not only be economic. The decision-making model taking shape—based on binding international commitments adopted without national votes—erodes the principle of subsidiarity on which the Union was founded.
Paradoxically, the countries with the best results in reducing smoking, such as Sweden, which has cut its rate to 5% thanks to regulated alternatives like snus and nicotine pouches, would be penalised for adopting effective national policies outside the WHO’s dogma.
While Ursula von der Leyen promises “less regulation and more economic freedom” at home, her Commission signs in Geneva a prohibitionist manifesto drafted by unelected bureaucrats.
In Brussels, they talk of “regulatory simplification,” yet in international forums, they negotiate new layers of global bureaucracy, from tobacco to digital health and climate governance.
It is the same double discourse witnessed with the Green Deal and pandemic restrictions: decisions taken in the name of “emergency” but outside democratic control.
No one disputes that States should protect public health. But doing so does not mean surrendering sovereignty—nor accepting that a network of NGOs and international technocrats should dictate what European countries may produce, sell, or tax.
True protection of health—and of freedom—requires reclaiming the capacity to legislate independently, ensuring transparency in NGO funding, and subjecting every new regulation to parliamentary debate and vote.
