After Australia, it is the EU now which is going ahead with a tobacco packaging regulation that has health warnings as well as a ban on flavored cigarettes. Reuters and IELP blog reported about it. After the Cloves Cigarettes and Australian Tobacco Plain Packaging case, will this be the next biggest battleground (once the EU regulations are enacted) for the tobacco industry to agitate?
"Manufactures have increasingly looked to developing Asian and African markets to compensate for falling European sales where rising incomes have led to a big increase in sales of cigarette brands such as Marlboro in recent years, making those markets a major source of revenue growth for tobacco firms.
Due be published on Wednesday, the proposals must be jointly approved by EU governments and the European Parliament before they can become law, a process that could take up to two years.
"There's going to be a long way to go once these proposals are published," said Simon Evans, a spokesman for Imperial Tobacco. "We are confident looking many years into the future that the EU will be an area where we can sustainably grow and develop our business."
The WTO dispute settlement mechanism and tobacco seem to be going along rather too often...
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