Brussels, 14/07/2003 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has decided to pursue infringement proceedings opened against Austria, Italy and Luxembourg for failure to respect their obligations under the Community legislation on the labelling of cigarette packs. Despite a call to order, these countries have still not notified the Commission of the national measures they had to adopt in order to transport European directive 2001/37/EC, on the production, sales and marketing of tobacco products, into national legislation. Each of them will receive a reasoned opinion (second stage of the procedure under article 226 of the Treaty), as the Commission is unaware of whether these national measures have been adopted, where as the cut-off date to do so was set at 30 September 2002.
It is worth noting that this directive makes the presence of bold-type warnings about the dangers of smoking to health obligatory on cigarette packs as of 30 September 2003, and bans misleading claims such as "light" or "mild". It also reduces, as of 1 January 2004, maximum levels of tar, carbon monoxide and nicotine in cigarettes, and forces Member States to ask producers and importers of tobacco products to indicate all ingredients used in every brand, the function of all additives used and any toxological data they have about the effects of these additives on health. These date will be studied by the Commission during 2004, and will allow it to propose common rules on additives for the whole Union.