Taxes

Ireland has the Presidency, a Tobacco Excise Directive to finish and a Swedish veto blocking the road. If they want to succeed with bringing the EU Member States to a unanimous agreement, its strategic approach is a mystery. The Irish compromise would eventually impose a minimum tax on nicotine pouches of €80/kg. Ireland must surely […]

Australia has long been praised as a global leader in tobacco control. With extremely high taxes, strict restrictions and policies closely aligned with WHO recommendations, the goal was to reduce nicotine use. The result? According to official estimates, the black market now accounts for around 80% of all tobacco and nicotine consumption. More and more […]

Cyprus has officially stepped away from efforts to force a consensus on the Tobacco Taxation Directive (TED)—exactly as expected. The deadlocked file now moves to the incoming Irish presidency. A Cypriot spokesperson confirmed to Politico Pro Healthcare that months of attempted compromises failed to resolve deep divisions between EU member states. In short: the proposal collapsed […]

The European Commission’s proposal to revise how the EU taxes cigarettes and tobacco-related products has reached a critical point. Bloomberg Tax now highlights Sweden as one of many member states that is set to vote against the proposal in its current form. It is important to understand that this is not an isolated objection. On […]

When an “EU diplomat” quoted by Euractiv claims that Sweden is facing a “last chance” to compromise in order to give nicotine pouches “legal recognition,” it mainly exposes how badly Brussels has misread the political reality in Sweden – and how little it understands the Swedish model. Sweden has already chosen. The cards are on […]

Negotiations on the EU’s new Tobacco Taxation Directive (TTD) have stalled. Officially, the disagreement concerns technical details and institutional processes. In practice, a far more serious question is emerging: who is actually scrutinising the evidence behind one of the EU’s most far-reaching tax proposals? FISC’s role and influence The European Parliament’s tax committee, FISC, is […]

Pouch Patrol has conducted a full review of all EU Member States’ positions in the negotiations on the new Tobacco Tax Directive (TTD). The conclusion is clear: the EU is facing one of its most deeply divided negotiation landscapes in years. The differences in proposed tax levels for nicotine pouches are so extreme that a […]

Another compromise proposal on the EU’s new Tobacco Tax Directive (TTD) has now been circulated from Brussels. But behind the word “compromise” lies, in practice, the same fundamental failure as before. What we are seeing is unchanged, excessively high tax levels on risk-reduced nicotine products—now merely disguised by slightly softer transition periods. Markus Lindblad, Head […]

Swedish nicotine pouch users are raising their voice against higher taxes and flavour bans from EU through a petition. – All EU citizens that wants nicotine pouches to remain an attractive, significantly less harmful, alternative to cigarettes should engage, says petition starter Markus Lindblad from Haypp Group.