Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-12-11-Speech-1-070"
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"en.20001211.3.1-070"2
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"Mr President, the tobacco directive addresses two points that are very dear to my group’s heart: the harmonisation of the internal market and public health. Health organisations are justifiably calling for more protection for public health. Hence, we are all in favour of the directive and of reducing tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide yields. That is also why we approve of increasing the size of the warnings, in accordance with the common position, and why, as per the common position, we favour short, pithy warnings on cigarette packets and support a ban on the use of misleading words such as ‘mild’, ‘light’, and ‘ultra-light’. Only where these terms are part of registered trademarks which are already marketed could consideration be given to granting derogations.
The industry complains about the inequality and inefficiency of the present legislation. The inequality concerns the permitted ingredients, for example. We readily support the proposal to produce a list of permitted ingredients.
The testing procedure is inefficient. As matters stand, each product has to be re-tested in each country. We are in favour of devising a standardised testing method recognised by all EU Member States, to be implemented by an approved testing laboratory. We would also like a test of this kind, carried out in a laboratory recognised by a Member State, to be valid in all EU Member States, as is customary in the field of medicine, so as to cut down on the number of tests performed on animals, for example.
We would ask that special consideration be given to the position of SMEs. This is hit disproportionately hard by the directive in some cases, specifically by Article 6(1). We will therefore vote in favour of the amendment that does request information on the ingredients used, but which proposes a more realistic working method than is outlined at present in the common position.
I have the following to say about the legal basis. The directive builds on three existing directives on the same subject which have the same legal basis. These have never caused problems with regard to the legal basis hitherto.
The legal services of the EU institutions do not foresee any problems in this area. We will certainly assume the legal basis to be valid once Article 133 has been added. Naturally, we want to follow correct legal procedures and it would, of course, be regrettable if the Court were ultimately to reject the position of our legal services, but we cannot afford to discard the directive because then we would have nothing, all the work would have been for nothing and we might as well start all over again with the same old work and the same texts. As far as Parliament is concerned, the important thing now is to show political courage and produce a directive which improves the functioning of the internal market and provides maximum protection in the field of public health."@en1
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