Polish EU Presidency must recognise rising illicit trade as major health security menace
Amid escalating, multi-faceted geopolitical tensions, Poland launched its six-month EU Council Presidency on 1 January with a decidedly security-focused agenda. Beyond its natural focus on defense, the Polish Presidency has incorporated health security among its seven priorities, with initiatives spanning prevention, new technologies and pharmaceutical supply chain security.
Under the helm of Polish MEP and chair Adam Jarubas, the European Parliament subcommittee on public health (SANT) is adopting a sovereignty-driven approach aligned with Warsaw’s vision, yet geopolitics have not altered Brussels’s core health ambitions. Jaruba’s SANT will equally progress new Commission plans to tackle cardiovascular disease (CVD) – the bloc’s largest cause of preventable deaths – based on Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan.
In doing so, Warsaw must use its influence in Brussels to address a rising threat to Europe’s health security: the illicit tobacco trade. By guiding the upcoming revision of the EU tobacco control framework in a WHO-compliant manner, the Polish Presidency can help enhance the bloc’s capacity to tackle a scourge directly feeding cancer and cardiovascular disease.
Illicit trade’s growing health menace
Among the first EU countries to approve a national cardiovascular plan, Poland is well-placed to lead the EU-wide effort. With the WHO warning that tobacco use in Europe accounts for roughly 20% of deaths linked to coronary heart disease – the most common CVD – curbing tobacco consumption across Europe must be a central pillar of the anti-CVD agenda.
Over one-quarter of European adults continue to smoke – roughly five times the 2040 target rate of 5% – with the bloc’s rising illicit tobacco trade threatening to exacerbate a public health plague already responsible for nearly 700,000 premature deaths in the EU every year. Moreover, young Europeans’ nearly 30% smoking rate is particularly concerning given this demographic’s susceptibility to the cheaper prices of illicit cigarettes.
As reported in KMPG’s latest annual study on the issue, Europe’s illicit tobacco consumption grew for the fifth consecutive year in 2023, representing over 35 billion illicit cigarettes in the EU and roughly €11.6 billion in excise tax revenue losses. Looking at the continent-wide picture, over 52 billion illicit cigarettes were smoked last year, accounting for nearly 10% of total consumption.
While certain countries, such as Poland and Italy, have made progress in reducing their respective illicit markets, the problem is exploding in member states like France, which alone generated nearly half of illicit consumption in 2023; and Belgium, where 1 in 4 cigarettes now stem from the black market – primarily shipped from Bulgaria
Big Tobacco evading responsibility
Yet, in keeping with tradition, Big Tobacco continues to deflect responsibility for the illicit trade, doubling down on its exaggerated claims that rising counterfeit cigarette production is the primary driver of Europe’s illicit consumption, as opposed to the smuggling of genuine product that the industry has long propagated to its commercial benefit amid tightening regulations.
According to research from the University of Bath’s renowned Tobacco Control Research Group (TCRG), genuine cigarettes represent roughly 60-70% of the illicit trade, while counterfeit tobacco, which “the industry continuously emphasises, comprises only 5%-8%” of the black market. Even the recent KPMG report, funded by the tobacco industry, acknowledges that the UK and Ukraine account for the bulk of the increase in counterfeit consumption.
This reality notably fails to explain the soaring illicit market in EU countries such as France, where cross-border purchases from smaller, less-regulated neighbouring markets are fueling the parallel trade. Indeed, Big Tobacco significantly undersupplies large, higher-price markets like France, while flooding countries like Luxembourg, whose provision soared 60% from 3.1 billion to nearly 5 billion cigarettes between 2023 and 2024 – roughly 8 times its annual domestic consumption.
Of course, considering that Europe’s consistently-rising illicit trade over the past 5 years coincides with the 2019 implementation of the EU’s failed track and trace system, Big Tobacco has every reason to pin the blame on counterfeits. As leading tobacco control NGOs, including France’s Alliance Contre le Tabac (ACT), EU-level SmokeFree Partnership (SFP) and the TCRG, have highlighted in a recent MEP-led White Paper, EU track and trace is operated by companies linked to the tobacco industry in total violation of the WHO FCTC Protocol’s independence requirements.
Tobacco industry’s track-and-trace pawns
At the heart of the controversial system are Swiss firms Inexto and Dentsu, and France’s Atos, each of which have deep ties to the tobacco industry-developed Codentify system. Inexto, led by former PMI executives who created Codentify, acquired the technology from an industry front group in 2016; Atos helped develop and falsely promote Codentify as an independent solution; and Dentsu purchased Blue Infinity, another Codentify co-developer, in 2017. According to former WHO FCTC Secretariat Head Vera Luiza de Costa e Silva, the Commission has “put a fox in charge of a hen house” by deploying a tobacco industry ally-controlled track and trace system.
As French public health NGO, the Comité National Contre le Tabagisme (CNCT), has reminded, this weak, WHO FCTC Protocol-violating system was “the result of lobbying by tobacco companies during the negotiation of the European Tobacco Products Directive (TPD)” ahead of its last revision. Crucially, the 2014 TPD revision initially included a requirement to implement an independent, WHO-compliant track and trace system before the industry successfully pushed for this provision’s removal.
More broadly, Costa e Silva has cautioned that “the tobacco industry is behind a concerted worldwide effort to prevent countries and organisations joining the Protocol.” The industry’s EU partners are threatening to undermine global tobacco control efforts, with Dentsu’s leadership presenting its technology as a viable solution for African parties to the Protocol and Inexto’s recently-launched rebrand ostensibly an attempt to mask its ongoing, WHO-violating financial ties to the tobacco industry and facilitate its global expansion.
Time to change tack
Dentsu’s and Inexto’s misleading charm offensives blatantly ignore warnings from tobacco control NGOs, including the Global Alliance for Tobacco Control and the SFP, that the EU system’s lack of industry independence renders it an ineffective solution for Protocol party countries outside of Europe.
Encouragingly, other regions have shown greater resilience to the industry-backed trace and trace, with Pakistan, Argentina and Ethiopia are among the countries that have excluded Inexto. What’s more, Ethiopia did not even qualify Dentsu, while In Ivory Coast, a WHO Protocol-compliant tender forced Dentsu’s tracking solution to withdraw, and a dubious award to Dentsu in Madagascar resulted in the entire tender process’s cancellation.
Moving forward, the EU should take inspiration from these countries. As emphasised in the aforementioned White Paper, the upcoming TPD revision must prioritise the implementation of an independent track and trace system fully aligned with the Protocol. Already a decade overdue as a result of Big Tobacco’s incessant lobbying and the Commission’s transparency failures, Brussels has no more margin for error.
This is particularly true in light of the EU’s persistently-high smoking rates – exacerbated by a growing illicit market – and the need for urgent progress in tackling tobacco-related cancer and cardiovascular disease. To cement its health security leadership, Poland must prioritise tackling the illicit tobacco trade during its EU Council Presidency. By championing a robust TPD revision, Warsaw can help shield citizens’ health from the industry’s profit-seeking manipulation while curbing a major supply chain vulnerability.
