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European Parliament backs risk-based nicotine rules — a signal for the pouch regulation fight

Parliament's cardiovascular report dropped the idea that all nicotine products are equally harmful — a principle that could shape TPD3, taxes and flavour rules for pouches.

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EUTPD3European Parliamentnicotine pouchesrisk-based regulationflavour banexcise dutySweden

The European Parliament has quietly endorsed an idea that could shape how nicotine pouches are regulated across the EU: different nicotine products carry different risks, and rules should reflect that.

MEPs adopted Parliament's response to the EU's first cardiovascular health strategy on September 16, voting 545 to 47 with 75 abstentions. The report is mostly about blood pressure targets, cholesterol screening and cardiac care. But its tobacco and nicotine section carries a sentence with real consequences: the text acknowledges that different nicotine products may have different risk profiles, and calls for "appropriate and differentiated" excise taxation across product categories.

Language that would have effectively equated all nicotine products with smoking was removed during negotiations, according to Brussels Signal. "The proposals to treat all nicotine products in the same way were scrapped."

Why it matters

This is a position marker ahead of the real fight. The next revision of the EU Tobacco Products Directive (TPD3) — expected to cover nicotine pouches for the first time — is being prepared now, and the European Commission has so far taken the opposite line, with Health Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi repeatedly describing all nicotine use as equally harmful as smoking. If Parliament holds this position into the TPD3 negotiations, pouches, vapes and heated tobacco could end up with rules and taxes scaled to their actual risk profile rather than cigarette-style treatment.

The stakes for Sweden are obvious: snus and white pouches are the reason the country has the EU's lowest smoking rate, and Swedish MEPs have spent years pushing exactly this framing in Brussels.

Swedish MEP Jessica Polfjärd (M), the only Swedish member of the Parliament's Public Health Committee and one of the negotiators, told Skaraborgs Nyheter she fought for the wording: "I fought to include a perspective that recognises that different products have different characteristics and different risks." She called the result "a good foundation for Parliament's work on the new tobacco regulations, which are expected to be presented later this year."

The catch: the same report wants tougher rules too

This is not a harm-reduction victory lap. The same report calls on the Commission to bring forward a revamped tobacco framework listing flavour restrictions or bans, limits on nicotine content, excise duties and regulation of social-media advertising for novel nicotine products.

Polfjärd was upfront about the trade-off. The flavour-ban wording "was part of the overall compromise" needed to get the report adopted, she said — but she stressed the report does not call for such bans, only leaving them available where deemed appropriate, and takes no position on flavours in nicotine pouches specifically.

So the Parliament is simultaneously open to risk-differentiated regulation and to restrictions that would hit pouches hard. Both instincts will be tested in the same legislative cycle.

What happens next

Two files will show whether the risk-profile principle survives contact with actual legislation:

  • The Cancer Plan (BECA) implementation report, now in the Public Health Committee, contains draft proposals — plain packaging, display restrictions, pre-market authorisation and tax convergence — that would apply broadly across nicotine categories and sit awkwardly against the cardiovascular report's differentiation language. A committee vote had been expected September 28, with an indicative plenary date of November 11, and some MEPs have complained the timetable is too rushed.
  • The TPD3 revision itself, where the Commission's proposal will reveal whether it accepts differentiated treatment or keeps treating all nicotine as equivalent.

Brussels Signal expects the position to "cause a standoff with the European Commission, which is much more hawkish on anything related to tobacco and nicotine." The political battle over nicotine in the EU is far from over — but for the first time, a broad majority in Parliament has put the principle that pouches are not cigarettes on the record.

SOURCES:

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