The European Commission’s consultation on the future of EU tobacco and nicotine rules closed on 14 August after drawing 39,795 responses. But questions remain over whether the Commission designed the EU tobacco survey to produce predetermined answers preferred by bureaucrats in Brussels.

The public consultation on the revision of the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) and the Tobacco Advertising Directive (TAD) closed at midnight Brussels time on 14 August 2026.

The results will feed into an impact assessment informing proposed legislation the Commission plans to present before the end of 2026.

“Nearly forty thousand people took the time to respond, which tells you how much this issue matters to ordinary consumers,” says Patrik Strömer, Secretary General of the Association of Swedish Snus Manufacturers.

“The question now is whether the Commission actually listens to them, or whether it treats the whole exercise as a box that’s already been ticked.”

Responses were not evenly distributed among member states. 

Poland accounted for the largest share by a wide margin – 14,431 responses, or more than a third of the total. Sweden was second with 3,694, followed by Czechia (3,150) and Spain (2,645). 

Germany, France and Italy each contributed under 4 percent. Alongside the responses from individuals, nearly 1,500 came from companies, NGOs, public authorities, and other organisations.

‘Impossible by design’

The sizeable number of responses has been overshadowed by a debate over the design of the EU tobacco survey itself.

Shortly after the consultation opened, the European Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (ETHRA) issued a detailed critique arguing the questionnaire was impossible to answer honestly for anyone who understands that different nicotine products carry very different risks.

“The survey betrays a lack of seriousness about the size of this population, the toll of disease and death, and the options available to address it,” ETHRA said in a statement.

“In particular, it signals a contemptuous attitude towards the views of citizens who have an evidence-based, nuanced public health case for tobacco harm reduction.”

By treating a cigarette and a nicotine pouch as if they belonged in the same regulatory category, ETHRA argues, the survey erases a difference in risk of up to two orders of magnitude between the most and least dangerous products. 

Faced with questions that draw no such distinction, an informed respondent is often left with only one available answer: “neither agree nor disagree.”

ETHRA identifies eight generic problems across the 23 questions – including that the survey offers no way to acknowledge unintended consequences, and no option to say an existing rule is excessive or counterproductive, such as the EU’s ban on snus, in place since 1992.

Swedish evidence absent from EU tobacco survey

Strömer says that gap is the one that matters most from a Swedish perspective.

“ETHRA is right that you cannot answer this survey honestly if you know anything about risk,” he says. 

“There’s no box for the most important fact we have – that the country that allowed a safer product ended up with the lowest smoking rates in Europe. If the questions are written so that reality can’t be entered as an answer, then the survey isn’t measuring opinion. It’s manufacturing it.”

Sweden negotiated an exemption from the EU snus ban when it joined in 1995, and its daily smoking rate has since fallen to around 3.7 percent – far below the EU average near 24 percent – making it the first EU country to pass the WHO “smoke-free” threshold of under 5 percent.

For harm-reduction advocates, that is evidence to be studied, not an exception to be set aside – and a consultation offering no way to raise it, they argue, cannot claim to be neutral.

What comes next

The 14 August deadline closes the consultation but not the debate. The Commission’s proposal, expected before the end of the year, will move to Parliament and the Council where the trade-offs the EU tobacco survey avoided will have to be addressed directly.

“I’m worried,” says Strömer. 

“If Brussels builds its next directive on a survey designed to avoid the evidence, it will repeat the mistake it made with snus in 1992 – and this time it will do it to the very products that are helping people quit smoking.”