The EU agreed last Thursday 15 May to ratify the world’s first anti-tobacco treaty despite German objections to the planned restrictions on advertising, leaving the United States in an isolated holdout.
The landmark tobacco control accord has been adopted on Wednesday 21 May by ministers at the World Health Organisation’s annual assembly, and it calls for restrictions on advertising and marketing, new labelling controls and a clampdown on smuggling and second-hand smoke.
Germany, due to its exceptionally powerful tobacco lobby, will make a special declaration explaining that, for constitutional reasons, it cannot apply the full advertising ban.