Anti-tobacco fund dogged by delays

Date: 30/11/1995

By Rory Watson

TWO years after the approval of a special EU fund to support programmes alerting the public to the dangers of smoking, no contracts have been signed and no money paid out.

The fund, financed by 1&percent; of the premium paid out to the Union's tobacco producers, had up to 14 million ecu to spend between 1993 and 1994 on projects to inform people of tobacco's harmful effects and to encourage research into the least harmful varieties.

Although a special committee has whittled down the number of projects still in the running for EU funding from 73 to 19, confirmation that funding will be assured is now unlikely before the end of the year.

News of the delay coincides with renewed attempts to persuade EU governments to agree on a ban on tobacco advertising at a meeting of health ministers today (30 November) - attempts which seem certain to end in failure once again.

The fund is criticised by health campaigners and others who believe that its very creation was designed as a small concession to pacify critics of the Union's practice of handing out over 1 billion ecu a year in subsidies to tobacco producers.

UK Socialist MEP Terry Wynn maintains: “There is no such thing as healthy tobacco. I feel this money is just being wasted. What will the research show at the end of it? The one thing they cannot say is that tobacco is safe. The fact this has gone on for so long shows they are not serious.”

Wynn is campaigning for a radical overhaul of the policy which he maintains produces a crop, 98&percent; of which has no market value. But defenders of the practice retort that it benefits farmers struggling in some of the Union's poorest areas in Greece and Italy.

That explanation is rejected by Wynn. “I dispute that when you consider there is tobacco production in the Loire valley, Germany and Austria. But the Union then ought to have a proper social and regional policy. You should give every tobacco farmer 3,000 ecu a year instead of subsidising the crop and then you would not have all this rubbish,” he says.

Last year, the Union paid out 1.1 billion ecu in tobacco subsidies, down from a peak of 1.3 billion ecu in 1991.

Critics suggest this puts the 14 million ecu the EU's tobacco fund for research and information had for 1993 and 1994, and the 9 million ecu it is likely to receive this year into perspective.

It also contrasts with the 11 million ecu currently devoted annually to the 'Europe Against Cancer' campaign.

Of this, some 15&percent; is targeted at smoking prevention in a bid to reduce the number of deaths from tobacco-related diseases, which kill 500,000 people in the Union every year.

The call for research and information projects - each of which has access to half the fund - was issued in July 1994. It prompted 22 requests in the first category and 51 in the second. By the end of September 1995, the technical and scientific committee had reduced these to seven and 12 respectively. Six of the committee's members represent the tobacco industry and three the health profession.

Commission officials deny that there has been any foot-dragging in the exercise. They point out that it was only after the 1994 harvest and after farmers had received their subsidies, that the size of the fund was known.

They add that the research projects being supported had to wait until the coming planting period, having missed the 1995 season, to ensure that the new strains being tested were being used. “We are drawing up the contracts and hope to have them out by the end of the year,” said one.

Andrew Hayes, liaison officer with the Association of European Cancer Leagues, directs another criticism at the fund. He says: “We put forward proposals, but we did not know what criteria would be used. On the basis of the information we have on the number of possibly successful projects, there is a suspicion that not all the money will be used.”

This fear is dismissed by Commission officials. Of the 12 information schemes chosen, one is expected to receive backing to the tune of 1 million ecu. The remainder of the fund targeted to such projects will be divided between the remaining 11 programmes.

Ironically, the fund is criticised by both camps of the tobacco issue.

Health campaigners accuse it of being a public relations exercise for the industry, while producers resent what they see as part of their income being used to campaign against their crop.