Zagreb: The products that have reshaped how Europeans consume nicotine have so far escaped the taxes that fall on cigarettes. The European Union is preparing to change that, advancing a long-delayed revision of its rules that would pull vapes, heated tobacco and nicotine pouches squarely into the reach of excise duty.

The overhaul of the tobacco tax framework would set higher minimum rates across member states and, for the first time, tax the newer products that regulators say have grown faster than the law governing them. Backers argue that the current directive, written for an era of conventional cigarettes, leaves gaping holes that shift consumption toward lightly taxed alternatives.

The stakes are both fiscal and public-health related. Tobacco duties raise tens of billions of euros a year for national treasuries, and wide gaps between countries fuel smuggling and cross-border shopping. By raising floors and widening the tax base, the Commission hopes to shrink those distortions while nudging prices upward on products it wants to discourage.

Progress has been slow. The Spanish presidency of the Council is aiming for a political agreement at a finance ministers’ meeting in the autumn, and even if governments align, the revised rules would apply only from later in the decade, with transitional periods to cushion the sharpest increases. The Commission’s outline of the excise regime sits at taxation-customs.ec.europa.eu.

Tax on tobacco is one of the areas where the Union requires unanimity, and that has historically slowed reform to a crawl. Lower-price countries worry that steep minimum rates will push consumers toward the black market, while higher-tax states argue that convergence is the only way to stop cheaper neighbours from undercutting their public-health policies.

The newer product categories complicate the debate further. Manufacturers of heated tobacco and pouches argue that their goods carry lower risk than combustible cigarettes and should be taxed more lightly, if at all. Health campaigners counter that leaving the products cheap and lightly regulated hooks a new generation on nicotine, and that the tax code should not reward a product simply for being new.

Automatic adjustment for inflation is another feature under discussion, intended to stop the real value of the duty from eroding steadily as prices climb. Countries that already index their tobacco taxes support the idea, though others are wary of surrendering control over rates to a formula.

For now the file remains a negotiation rather than a law. But the direction is set: the Union has decided that the way Europeans consume nicotine has outrun the way it taxes them, and it intends to close the distance. How high the new floors rise, and how hard smaller economies resist, will determine whether the reform lands as planned or stalls yet again.