Several cigarette manufacturers had seized the Council of State to annul the implementing decrees concerning the neutral package. The Institution rejected their appeals.
It was a flagship measure of the law to modernize the health system, carried by Marisol Touraine and adopted in December 2015: to impose neutral cigarette packs. The decrees implementing this measure were published in March and August. But PSeveral companies manufacturing or marketing tobacco products in France as well as the National Confederation of tobacconists of France had asked the Council of State to annul these decrees. This Friday, December 23, the institution announced that it was dismissing the tobacco companies.
Since November 20, 2016, tobacconists are no longer delivered in neutral packages. Of olive-green color, they do not bear any logo or distinctive sign. All brands are mentioned in identical typography and for the first time, at the bottom of the package. Health warnings occupy a prominent place, combining text messages on a black background and shock photos.
Criticisms rejected
On October 17, Seita, the French subsidiary of the British tobacco company Imperial Tobacco, explained Why she had appealed to the Council of State. Claiming to be threatened in its freedom to undertake, the company considered that the French Ministry of Health had chosen, “once again, to interpret the directive in a broad and excessive manner and therefore to go further than the measures provided for in the other countries of the European Union ”.
The generalization of the neutral package is in fact part of the framework of the transposition of the European Directive on tobacco products of 2014. The latter plans to regulate, for all member countries, the elements that manufacturers can put on packages by prohibiting statements deemed too positive and likely to encourage consumption.
La Seita did not hesitate to denounce “the extreme nature of this decision which will lead to the death of certain brands”. Cigarette manufacturers feared that buyers could no longer identify the products. An opinion that does not share the Council of State. In a communicated, the Institution recalls the various reasons given in the appeal, but announces dismiss all the criticisms formulated by the applicants, and therefore dismiss the appeal.
From January 1, 2017, only neutral packages can be sold in tobacco shops. Tobacconists will have until this date to sell their stocks of “classic” packages.
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