Debate on Tobacco agreement, during the EP plenary session of February in Brussels. Statements by Bart STAES (Greens/EFA, BE), Ingeborg GR&Auml;SSLE (EPP, DE), Piernicola PEDICINI (EFDD, IT), In&eacute;s AYALA SENDER (S&amp;D, ES), Dennis de JONG (GUE/NGL, NL), Kristalina GEORGIEVA, Vice-President of the EC in charge of the Budget and Human Resources

Brussels

debate

plenary session

fight against smoking (T)

PEDICINI, Piernicola (Greens/EFA, IT)

GRÄSSLE, Ingeborg (EPP, DE)

STAES, Bart (Greens/EFA, BE)

AYALA SENDER, Inés (S&D, ES)

de JONG, Dennis (GUE/NGL, NL)

GEORGIEVA, Kristalina (BG)

Tobacco agreement: extracts from the debate

SOUNDBITE (Dutch), Bart STAES (Greens/EFA, BE), There is legislation there, I know you are a big fan of the Un convention and the FCTC protocol, and this really is a worldwide campaign. Therefore commissioner let's not pretend that the tobacco industry is our friend. They are opponents, they are adversaries because they are against the tobacco agreement, they are against Australia and other countries when it comes to the ISDS mechanism. Of course I support you in your intention to get the UN convention and the FC, the framework convention on tobacco control, supported and ratified by the member states, that's a start, but let us have, let's push for implementation full compliance and enforcement of the tobacco directive. Let's push for the ratification of the WTO convention that's where we can start.

SOUNDBITE (Dutch), Bart STAES (Greens/EFA, BE), I think that's going to undermine our authority because other countries, are they going to sign up? Are they going to ratify the agreement if we are doing inside deals with PMI?

SOUNDBITE (German), Ingeborg GR&#196;SSLE (EPP, DE), We still have a great deal of smuggling going on and there we need proper investigation and due diligence. If we look at raw tobacco we have five producers in the EU and we have manufacturers who make cigarette paper, we have manufacturers of cigarette filters as well who have world wide markets. If we keep tabs on these industries on the way they behave then we can make progress.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), Piernicola PEDICINI (EFDD, IT), For years the commission has kept on postponing the publication of the evaluation of the Philipp Morris agreement. We are now in the stage where the deal will expire in six months, and the Parliament has been kept in the ignorance of all the content for all of this time. I'd like to say that while the Commission spends a part of the budget against tobacco on the Hercole program, we don't know how this money is spent inside the single Member States. We are talking about 1.6 billion Euros of which the citizens don't know the final destination.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish), In&#233;s AYALA SENDER (S&amp;D, ES), Another question is are our custom authorities strong enough to deal with the problem of tobacco smuggling? We now have ever bigger port installation and more difficult to police and control. What can we do to better the situation here as it got tobacco smuggling? It is important that we implement the directive fully and ratify the tobacco agreement.

SOUNDBITE (Dutch), Dennis de JONG (GUE/NGL, NL), There is clearly, I don't think there is any demonstrable improvement in terms of public health thanks to that agreement. Of course 68 millions Euros in terms of fines and penalties that is clearly part of the equation but so much remains under the radar because in order to get a seizure a certain number of cigarettes have to be involved.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kristalina GEORGIEVA, Vice-President of the EC in charge of the Budget and Human Resources, Today the growing problem of cheap whites requires us to continue to work with our Member States to tackle it and i am very pleased to report that OLAF has taken this mission of tackling illegal smuggling very seriously together with Member States last year, 2015, 60'000'000 cigarettes were confiscated and the vast share of those were cheap whites,

SOUNDBITE (English), Kristalina GEORGIEVA, Vice-President of the EC in charge of the Budget and Human Resources, The track and trace features under this directive will become mandatory for all manufacturers and importers in May 2019. Just as importantly we have the WHO framework convention on tobacco control it requires 40 ratifications to enter into force so far we have 15.