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August 9, 2026

Newsletter

The European Post

Policy • Diplomacy • Strategic Insight

LATEST
New EU Gas Market Rules Take Effect With Consumer SafeguardsDeforestation Regulation Holds Its December Deadline Despite CutsDigital Omnibus Delays Europe’s High-Risk AI Deadline to 2027Europe’s Schools Confront a Widening Basic Skills GapRule of Law Report Finds Progress but Trust Still LagsIRIS2 Gains 66 Satellites as Brussels Signs the Rollout DealNature Restoration Plans Come Due as Member States Race a DeadlineECB Rates Hold at 2.25 Percent as Frankfurt Waits on the DataEU Budget Talks Turn to Cohesion as Ireland Takes OverWildfire Response Stretches Europe’s Emergency Fleet ThinCan Europe’s Quantum Plan Match Its Big Ambitions?Armenia Edges West as Moscow’s Grip Slips AwayEurope Inherits the World’s Aid Bill It Cannot Fully PayAir Passenger Rights Get Their First Overhaul in Two DecadesErasmus Opens a 5 Billion Euro Round for Skills and MobilityCeuta Crisis Pushes the EU Toward Faster Migrant ReturnsBulky Parcels Face a Packaging Crackdown From August 12Can Europe Build Its Drone Wall Before 2030 Arrives?Indonesia’s Trade Deal With Europe Nears Its Final SignatureEurope Leans on Beijing to Keep Climate Talks Alive Before AntalyaNew EU Gas Market Rules Take Effect With Consumer SafeguardsDeforestation Regulation Holds Its December Deadline Despite CutsDigital Omnibus Delays Europe’s High-Risk AI Deadline to 2027Europe’s Schools Confront a Widening Basic Skills GapRule of Law Report Finds Progress but Trust Still LagsIRIS2 Gains 66 Satellites as Brussels Signs the Rollout DealNature Restoration Plans Come Due as Member States Race a DeadlineECB Rates Hold at 2.25 Percent as Frankfurt Waits on the DataEU Budget Talks Turn to Cohesion as Ireland Takes OverWildfire Response Stretches Europe’s Emergency Fleet ThinCan Europe’s Quantum Plan Match Its Big Ambitions?Armenia Edges West as Moscow’s Grip Slips AwayEurope Inherits the World’s Aid Bill It Cannot Fully PayAir Passenger Rights Get Their First Overhaul in Two DecadesErasmus Opens a 5 Billion Euro Round for Skills and MobilityCeuta Crisis Pushes the EU Toward Faster Migrant ReturnsBulky Parcels Face a Packaging Crackdown From August 12Can Europe Build Its Drone Wall Before 2030 Arrives?Indonesia’s Trade Deal With Europe Nears Its Final SignatureEurope Leans on Beijing to Keep Climate Talks Alive Before Antalya

Smokers Could Dodge Steeper Taxes As Capitals Stay Deadlocked

Björn Hennie
Regulatory Affairs Reporter, Digital and Technology

Nicosia: The government steering the bloc’s agenda this half-year has had to admit defeat, at least for now, on one of the thorniest files on its desk. After months of trying to broker a compromise on how Europe taxes tobacco, the Cypriot presidency conceded that consensus among the member states was out of reach, leaving a long-delayed overhaul stuck in the place it has occupied for years.

The directive in question would update rules that many consider badly out of date, both because inflation has eroded the real value of the minimum duties and because a wave of newer products, from vaping devices to heated tobacco and nicotine pouches, sits awkwardly inside a framework built for cigarettes. The European Commission’s proposal aimed to raise the floor sharply. It called for lifting the minimum excise on cigarettes to sixty-three per cent of the retail price and pushing the cash threshold to two hundred and fifteen euros per thousand sticks, a steep jump from the ninety-four euros set under the current regime.

The Parliament has now softened almost every edge of that plan. Its economic affairs committee adopted a position by thirty-two votes to twenty-one with two abstentions, recommending that the cigarette rate stay at the existing sixty per cent rather than climb, and trimming the euro threshold to two hundred. For the newer products the committee went further still, proposing lower rates and longer phase-in periods that in some cases would stretch as far as 2034. A vote in the full chamber is expected in the middle of the month.

Even a softened parliamentary line, however, runs into the hardest obstacle of all. Tax files require unanimity in the Council, which means a single capital can block the whole package, and several have shown no appetite to move. Governments that lean on tobacco revenue, those wary of fuelling cross-border smuggling and those with strong domestic industries have pulled in different directions, and the presidency’s acknowledgement that no agreement was within reach reflects how entrenched those positions have become.

The stakes are not only fiscal. Higher tobacco taxes are among the public-health measures with the best evidence behind them, since price is one of the most reliable levers for nudging people, especially the young, away from smoking. Health advocates have pressed for the Commission’s tougher numbers precisely on those grounds, while warning that the long transition periods floated for vapes and pouches risk leaving fast-growing products lightly taxed during the years they are winning new users.

For now the practical effect of the deadlock is that nothing changes. The minimum duties stay where they are, the newer products keep their patchwork treatment across the bloc, and the timeline drifts. The revised rules, if they are ever agreed, were meant to take effect at the start of 2028, but that date assumes a breakthrough that the presidency has just admitted it could not deliver. The next government to hold the rotating chair will inherit a dossier that has defeated several of its predecessors.

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