With the long-awaited Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) revision yet to surface, the EU’s most vocal anti-vaping advocates are ramping up pressure to impose strict new regulations on e-cigarettes and other ‘new nicotine products.’
In an early March letter to EU Health Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi, Dutch Health Minister Vincent Karremans notably expressed his country’s dismay at the omission of new vaping regulations from the Commission’s 2025 work programme.
Describing this decision as “harmful,” Karremans has urged Brussels to take “decisive” action, including “comprehensive restrictions on flavours” – a drastic and misguided move that the Netherlands has already implemented domestically. Amid stalled EU-wide regulation, individual member states are increasingly pursuing their own vaping policies, with countries like Latvia backing the Dutch model, and Greece and Italy among those pushing back against excessive restrictions.
Concerningly, the Dutch-led effort threatens to undermine the well-documented tobacco cessation and harm reduction role of vaping products in general, and flavours in particular. As discussions advance, the EU must push for balanced, science-based policymaking that acknowledges the importance of vaping flavours, as well as the risk that flavour bans will push consumers toward unregulated black-market products.
Vaping fault lines emerging in Europe
While the Commission has left the TPD and tobacco excise reform off this year’s work programme, the Polish EU Council Presidency has other plans for the coming months. On the domestic front, Poland has recently introduced new excise taxes on vaping products, while its EU Presidency is pushing for harmonised vaping excise taxes at the EU level.
Reflecting emerging trends in eastern Europe, Bulgaria’s National Assembly unanimously approved a bill in February that would have banned all vapes – a drastic move that Sofia’s legislators have since scaled back to only include disposables, although a ban on flavoured vapes reportedly remains on the table.
The anti-flavours effort has gathered steam across the EU over the past year, with a Denmark-led coalition of 12 countries – including Poland, France, Germany, Estonia, Spain and the Netherlands – backing a proposal last June pressuring the Commission to impose a bloc-wide ban on flavoured vapes. In total, 14 member-states have either enacted flavour bans or are currently debating them, leaving less than half of the EU-27 spared of this ill-advised approach sweeping across Europe.
Debunking flavoured vaping myths
Aptly displaying the ideological basis of these regulatory proposals, Estonian Health Minister Riina Sikkut recently quipped that “we don’t just need a smoke-free generation, we need a nicotine-free generation.” This disturbingly prevalent failure to distinguish between tobacco and tobacco-free nicotine products is at the heart of the problem, representing a serious public health menace for Europe.
Indeed, opponents of flavoured vaping are acting on the flawed assumption that flavoured e-liquids entice young people into nicotine addiction, inevitably leading them to smoking tobacco cigarettes. However, this flawed ‘gateway theory’ has been disproven by many independent studies – research from the University of Hamburg, for example, has found that over 90% of vapers in Germany are former smokers, while just 1% had never smoked before.
Far from reducing harm, banning flavours could have the opposite effect. A new study from the University of Missouri and Yale School of Public discovered that US states restricting flavoured vaping saw declines in e-cigarette use among young adults – but also a rise in youth cigarette smoking compared to states without such bans.
These findings reflect a growing body of research confirming vapers’ clear preference for flavours as a cessation tool and their overwhelming opposition to flavour bans – a reality that overzealous regulation completely ignores.
Lessons from experiences overseas
With time still left to reverse course, the EU can fortunately learn from the experiences of other governments around the world which have implemented flavour bans.
Consider Massachusetts, whose state government limited the sale of flavoured vaping products to designated smoking bars in 2020. This approach has predictably backfired, with the latest Massachusetts Multi-Agency Illegal Tobacco Task Force Annual Report released in late February revealing that illicit vape seizures surged nearly 21,000% in a single year, skyrocketing from 1,326 units to 279,432 products in 2024.
In Canada, flavour bans implemented in certain provinces have similarly pushed vapers to the black market, whose products present grave health risks – for example, the US CDC has confirmed that the EVALI lung disease outbreak that started in 2019 was caused by Vitamin E Acetate Oil found mainly in illicit vaping cartridges.
Meanwhile, Australia’s notoriously harsh vaping restrictions are fueling a thriving black market while keeping smoking rates stubbornly high, a fact public health experts have repeatedly warned against. Queen Mary University of London Professor Peter Hajek has notably highlighted data indicating that youth smoking rates are falling much faster in the significantly less restrictive UK and US vaping markets than in Australia.
As tobacco harm reduction expert Clive Bates has rightly asserted, “black market behavior is unintended and unwelcome, but easily anticipated,” adding that pro-ban governments’ failure to factor in this impact reflects “the same kind of dumb failure that has led us into the War on Drugs.”
Better way forward
Looking ahead, overly-restrictive vaping policies, such as blanket flavour bans, risk derailing smokers’ progress in quitting tobacco. Rather than sacrificing the EU’s tobacco-free future goals on the altar of a misguided ‘nicotine-free future,’ Brussels must introduce a balanced policy framework for vaping that preserves flavours’ cessation and harm reduction offer while keeping young people and non-smokers away from e-cigarettes.
Unlike their Nordic neighbors Denmark and Finland, Sweden and Norway have achieved remarkable success by shirking the scientifically-baseless nicotine-free approach and focusing on what works to slash smoking rates. By embracing less harmful alternatives like nicotine pouches and vaping, Norway’s smoking rate has dropped to just 7%, while Sweden’s tobacco harm reduction approach has positioned it to become the world’s first “smoke-free” country – progress reflected in the country’s significantly lower smoking-related deaths and cancer rates compared to the EU average.
The EU stands at a pivotal moment in shaping its approach to vaping. Instead of yielding to alarmist rhetoric and ideological rigidity, Brussels must prioritise harm reduction and support smokers in their transition toward a tobacco-free future. With the Polish Presidency intent on progressing new EU vaping rules, the time for smart regulation is now.
