Can you please substantiate that MEP's were not able to "properly review the science and the evidence"?
I'll keep this brief as this isn't the topic of the thread but basically:
Article 20 (the bit that pertains to vaping) was tacked onto the TPD and was drafted in a rushed process called
trilogue . this is basically a behind closed doors series of meeting with EU lawyers and some other interested parties, to hammer out the text of directives.
The people in the meetings for Article 20 of the TPD didn't include any pro-vaping people or anyone representing the lots of credible scientific research that was being done at the time. IIRC we had something like 7 or 8 peer reviewed papers from proper scientific journals detailing exactly how and why the directive was bad all of which was hand waved away by the trilogue committee and wasn't properly debated prior to the vote.
They drafted a dogs dinner of a directive as a result of lack of expertise and lack of consultation.
Here is a blog from the time from
Clive Bates. Clive is a former director of ASH (Action on Smoking and Health) and has also worked as a civil servant for the cabinet office and Environment Agency, so in short he knows what he's talking about.
Clive Bates said:
Shoddy drafting and improper undemocratic amendments. [...]
It simply is not credible to produce 4,500 words of new regulation in a closed and insular process between October and December 2013 with no consultation with these stakeholders. Not only has that led to poorly designed regulation, but it violates obligations set out in the EU treaties, which require consultation on legislative proposals [...]
Flawed science, inadequate analysis. For EU legislation to be good for public health, and therefore to have a firm legal base, it needs to be based on sound science and analysis. To the extent that science has been used to justify the proposals, it has drawn stinging criticism from the scientists whose work has been cited. See: Scientific errors in the Tobacco Products Directive – a letter sent by scientists to the European Union and follow-up. The supporting analysis for this part of the directive is completely inadequate: there is no impact assessment or credible justification for the measures. The little there is (a one page fact sheet) has been dismissed by experts as a set of scientifically baseless assertions. [...]
To top all that off the President of the European Parliament at the time Martin Schulz refused initially to allow split and separate voting for different aspects of the TPD (which was and is, in most part, a good directive) changing his mind an hour before the vote took place (Feb 26th 2014) then he refused to allow more time for stakeholders to make their case against article 18A (which later became Article 20) so the whole thing got passed in a very rushed vote. (this is the political dirty trick I am referring to)
MEP Martin Callanan (now Lord Callanan) stood up in the EP immediately before the vote to try to make the case for having more time to review Article18A and was shut down in short order.
I am not saying it's undemocratic because I didn't get my way, I am saying it's undemocratic because directives that effect millions of Europeans should at least be drafted by people who have expertise on the subject at hand and then properly debated before being voted on.
It turns out that many EU directives are drafted using trilogue, which seems to me to be a very flawed process.
EU directives, by and large, reflect the desires of corporate lobbyists and not what would actually be best for the people.
I'll happily go into more depth if you are interested on the TPD, but not in this thread. The
full text of the TPD is here.
