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Nearly 40,000 responses later, the EU is closing in on nicotine pouch rules

The European Commission closed its 12-week consultation on revising the Tobacco Products Directive on 14 August 2026, drawing 39,795 responses — far more than the 25,000 initially reported. Poland alone accounted for 14,431. Nicotine pouches are explicitly named for possible EU-wide rules on flavours, nicotine content, packaging, and marketing. A legislative proposal is expected before the end of 2026.

PouchDaily Desk·
Nearly 40,000 responses later, the EU is closing in on nicotine pouch rules
EUTPDflavour bannicotine pouchregulationEuropean CommissionETHRA

The European Commission has closed the public consultation on rewriting its tobacco and nicotine rulebook, and nicotine pouches are squarely in the frame. The 12-week consultation on revising the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) and Tobacco Advertising Directive (TAD) ended on 14 August 2026, drawing 39,795 responses — far more than the ~25,000 initially reported by ECigIntelligence in the days before the deadline. A formal legislative proposal is expected before the end of 2026.

Nothing is banned yet. But the closing of the consultation moves the EU from asking questions to drafting answers — and the questions include whether pouch flavours, nicotine strength, packaging, and marketing should face bloc-wide restrictions for the first time.

What happened

The Commission launched the consultation on 22 May 2026 as part of its review of the TPD and TAD. Its April 2026 evaluation concluded the current framework has not kept pace with how products, consumption, and digital marketing have changed.

The consultation explicitly named nicotine pouches among the products being considered for new EU rules, alongside e-cigarette flavours, disposable vapes, heated tobacco, nicotine-free e-cigarettes, packaging, and digital marketing.

This matters because the current TPD regulates nicotine-containing e-cigarettes but does not comprehensively cover nicotine pouches the same way. The Commission has identified that gap as one of the shortcomings of the existing system and is considering extending the scope of EU legislation to novel products — with pouches named directly.

Who responded — and from where

The final tally of 39,795 responses was heavily concentrated in a handful of member states, according to Snusforumet. Poland accounted for the largest share by a wide margin — 14,431 responses, more than a third of the total. Sweden was second with 3,694, followed by Czechia (3,150) and Spain (2,645). Germany, France, and Italy each contributed under 4 percent.

Alongside individual responses, nearly 1,500 came from companies, NGOs, public authorities, and other organisations.

The Polish dominance is striking. It reflects the intensity of the flavour-ban debate in Poland — a country where the nicotine pouch market has grown rapidly and where national flavour restrictions were briefly imposed and then frozen under EU standstill rules. Polish consumers and retailers mobilised in large numbers, treating the EU consultation as a referendum on whether pouch flavours survive.

'Impossible by design'

The response count has been overshadowed by a debate over the survey itself. The European Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (ETHRA) issued a detailed critique arguing the questionnaire was impossible to answer honestly for anyone who understands that different nicotine products carry very different risks.

By treating a cigarette and a nicotine pouch as if they belonged in the same regulatory category, ETHRA argues, the survey erases a difference in risk of up to two orders of magnitude between the most and least dangerous products. Faced with questions that draw no such distinction, an informed respondent is often left with only one available answer: "neither agree nor disagree."

ETHRA identifies eight generic problems across the 23 questions — including that the survey offers no way to acknowledge unintended consequences, and no option to say an existing rule is excessive or counterproductive, such as the EU's ban on snus, in place since 1992.

Patrik Strömer, Secretary General of the Association of Swedish Snus Manufacturers, put it bluntly: "There's no box for the most important fact we have — that the country that allowed a safer product ended up with the lowest smoking rates in Europe. If the questions are written so that reality can't be entered as an answer, then the survey isn't measuring opinion. It's manufacturing it."

Sweden negotiated an exemption from the EU snus ban when it joined in 1995. Its daily smoking rate has since fallen to around 3.7 percent — far below the EU average near 24 percent — making it the first EU country to pass the WHO "smoke-free" threshold of under 5 percent.

Why it matters for pouches

Right now, a nicotine pouch sold in one EU country can face completely different rules from the same product sold a border away. The Commission says that fragmentation — divergent national rules on flavours, plain packaging, and other nicotine products — creates internal-market barriers and distorts competition.

For pouch makers, the stakes are concrete. If the eventual proposal extends TPD-style product standards to pouches, it could mean EU-wide caps on nicotine content, limits or bans on flavours, standardized packaging, and tighter marketing rules — across all 27 member states at once.

Member states are already split. Euractiv reported in March that a group led by France and the Netherlands favours tighter restrictions, while countries including Italy and Greece argue that decisions on newer products should rest on robust scientific evidence and consider whether those products differ from conventional cigarettes.

One caveat worth stating plainly: some industry websites have claimed that 12 EU member states are jointly seeking a nicotine-pouch flavour ban. 2Firsts reports it could not find an EU Council, European Commission, or member-state government document confirming that specific "12-country" claim, so it should not be treated as established fact.

What's next

The next milestone is the Commission's legislative proposal, currently indicated for before the end of 2026 — though both the timing and final content remain subject to change. No formal "TPD3" text has been published; the term is shorthand for the coming revision, not the title of an adopted law.

Once a proposal lands, it still has to pass through the full EU legislative process involving the European Parliament and the Council. That means a final law is unlikely before 2027 at the earliest.

Strömer's worry is that the consultation's design flaws carry forward: "If Brussels builds its next directive on a survey designed to avoid the evidence, it will repeat the mistake it made with snus in 1992 — and this time it will do it to the very products that are helping people quit smoking."

For now, the 14 August closing is a procedural milestone, not a decision date. But it's the one that confirms the EU is serious about bringing nicotine pouches into a harmonized regulatory framework — and that flavour, the engine of pouch category growth, is on the table.

Where to buy: Compare nicotine pouch prices across retailers at PouchFinder.

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