Commenting on the High Court's decision to refer the tobacco industry judicial reviewapplication to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, ASH highlighted the largely inevitable outcome of this procedural hearing.  Clive Bates, Director of ASH

"Nothing at all unexpected happened.  The English Court is basically a letterbox to Luxembourg where the tobacco industry's complaints will be eventually have to beheard. We expected the case to be referred, because there is no realistic alternative."

Although today's hearing changes very little, ASH continues to express dismay at the tobacco industry's attempt to thwart the decision of European Governments to ban tobacco advertising:

"The tobacco industry is hell bent on wasting civil service time and tax-payers'money by gratuitously fighting a measure that was an election manifesto commitment, andagreed by the European Parliament, Council of Ministers and Commission.  It is about time they simply accepted that this is how democracy works - even if they don't like the results. "

"They are fighting to retain the dubious commercial freedom to recruit teenage smokers and to keep adults hooked.  Without new smokers and addicted adults, the indstry will die."

Background

The tobacco industry argues that the Government should not have agreed to the EUtobacco advertising directive (98/43/EC) which became law on 30th July 1998, because it has be made under an inappropriate legal base, namely Article 100a of the Maastricht Treaty, the Article establishing the single market.

On the substantive issue of the legal base (not considered by the judge in this hearing), ASH's draws its confidence in the appropriate use of Article 100a from the active or tacit approval of each of the professional legal services of the Commission, Parliament and Council of Ministers - the three EU institutions so far involved. There is a wide variety of regulations covering tobacco marketing in the Member States, and harmonisation taking account of the health of EU citizens leads to the case for a comprehensive ban.