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Belgium: taking a lead in Europe

d.simpson@iath.org

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

For many years, the corridors of power in Brussels, the Belgian capital, seemed to be peopled almost exclusively by tobacco lobbyists. It was not the Belgian parliament that they stalked, but the European Commission, secretariat of the European Union (EU). Their mission was to try to prevent the development of EU directives that would in due course require each member state to enact effective tobacco control legislation in its own parliament. Sometimes the industry lobbyists’ stalking would turn into a downright stampede, on occasions, the overwhelming majority of people packing out committee rooms would turn out to be doing the industry’s dirty work. Now that the EU has been expanded to 27 countries, it is easy to see why so much effort was poured into the resistance movement, and conversely, how much is owed to politicians and officials who fought it all the way on behalf of health.

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