Mr President, smoking is bad for the health. It is, however, naive to assume that we will manage to banish smoking altogether. What matters most in our view is that we have a responsibility to make every effort to prevent people from taking up smoking at an increasingly young age. With this in mind, Member States could consider increasing cigarette prices and prohibiting the sale to children under the age of 16. I would like to make the following observations about the directive. With regard to the legal basis, I welcome the fact that the directive will now be put to the vote. The European Parliament has political responsibility in this respect, and we do not need to wait for legal procedures. This would be a first, we have never done this before and there is always something being drawn up somewhere. Moreover, the legal offices of the European Parliament and the European Commission have confirmed the correctness of the legal basis. Secondly, I would like to touch upon health. First of all, I am in favour of excluding yields from the packets, which seems to have a misleading effect. Lower tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide yields are just as harmful to health and are, in fact, sometimes even more harmful. It is sufficient to indicate that these products are in the packets and that they are harmful to health. People should, however, be able to gain easy and free access to product information. Strangely, this proposal facilitates export for health organisations and industry alike, and has a positive effect on the votes. With regard to health warnings, Mr President, given the range of wishes regarding the warning size, I have now decided in favour of maintaining the percentages quoted by the European Commission, which can now be considered a compromise. It is also important to point out the dangers of passive smoking. So far, these have been underestimated, but the serious effects are becoming increasingly clear. Other than that, I am of the view that warnings should be kept as brief and punchy as possible. Longer texts render the warnings less forceful. With regard to subsidies, I am in favour of phasing these out. It is not credible to discourage smoking on the one hand and to stimulate the cultivation of tobacco on the other. With regard to the market, Mr President, an open internal market entails developing equal starting positions for the industry in the different Member States. This is why I am in favour of scrapping the ban on snuff. This product is not healthy but not much worse than other products to warrant sole exclusion. As for export, Mr President, I am of the opinion that the same health requirements should apply to sales within and outside the EU. Concerning warnings, the rules of the importing countries could prevail. In respect of the testing method, Mr President, it is important to arrive at a uniform testing method within the EU that has been established by an independent scientific body comprising experts from different related disciplines who would then be required to develop the testing methods. Each Member State should then appoint a competent laboratory, either on their own territory or not, as the case may be, and tests carried out in these recognised laboratories should then have to be recognised across all Member States. It would be a useless exercise if the same tests were to be carried out in all the Member States in accordance with uniform testing methods. Finally, Mr President, I would like to point out the difference between cigarettes, pipes and cigars. Smoking is bad for the health and all tobacco products are bad, but there are distinctions between the different products. Everyone will agree that the target group of pipe and cigar smokers will be different to that of cigarette smokers. Hence my proposal to draw a distinction in the directive between pipe and cigar tobacco with regard to the size (a smaller percentage) and colour of the warnings (namely not black and white but also to allow contrasting colours). Cigar and pipe smokers are older, less frequent smokers in the main, and are mainly social smokers. The product concerned is also more expensive. If we mainly wish to discourage people from taking up smoking at a young age, this is not the target group. Hence the distinction drawn. IN THE CHAIR: INGO FRIEDRICHVice-President

Political group: PPE-DE