Council asks EU finance ministers to agree a nicotine pouch tax
The Council of the EU has put the tobacco taxation package before finance ministers on 9 November and asked them for a general approach — a negotiating position that would, for the first time, define nicotine pouches in EU law and set minimum excise rates for them. The European Parliament rejected the same proposal in June and asked the Commission to withdraw it. Because the legal basis is Article 113 TFEU, that rejection has no legal effect.
The notice went out on 23 October as Council document CM 4725/26, the agenda for the Economic and Financial Affairs meeting at 9 November 2026 (15:00)
. Under Legislative deliberations
sits the item Tobacco taxation package
, covering a Council Directive on the structure and rates of excise duty
applied to tobacco
and a second directive on general arrangements, and against both of them the words General approach
.
What ministers are being asked to back
The underlying proposal is COM(2025) 580 final, adopted Brussels, 16.7.2025
. Article 10(1) of it carries the definition that matters:
For the purposes of this Directive, ‘nicotine pouches’ means products containing nicotine intended for oral intake which are mixed with vegetable fibres or equivalent substrate, which are presented in sachet portions or porous sachets or in an equivalent format and which do not contain tobacco.
That is the first time nicotine pouches have been given a legal definition in a proposed EU act. The phrase appears thirteen times across the 44-page document; oral tobacco
and snus
appear zero times, which is a reminder that this file sits beside the oral tobacco ban rather than touching it.
The rates in the proposal as published come in two steps. From 1 January 2030, Article 22(3) would set nicotine pouches: 25 % of the retail selling price including all taxes or the
Union rate of EUR 71,5 per kilogram;
. From 1 January 2032, Article 22(4) raises that to nicotine pouches: 50 % of the retail selling price including all taxes or the
Union rate of EUR 143 per kilogram, adjusted in accordance with Article 12;
, with Member States shall be allowed a transitional period until 31 December 2031 in order to reach the rates or minimum amounts laid down in paragraph 4 of this Article.
Those are the figures the Commission proposed, not the figures ministers will vote on. The Irish Presidency circulated fresh compromise texts and took them to the Working Party on Tax Questions (High Level) on 26 October. I downloaded and searched 351 Council documents covering the relevant numbering range and 100 meeting notices from 20 October to 4 November; the compromise text is not public, and nothing in the register says what it changes. Anyone quoting €143 per kilogram as a decided number today is quoting a July 2025 proposal.
Why Parliament’s rejection does not stop it
On 17 June 2026 Parliament adopted resolution P10_TA(2026)0211, whose operative paragraphs read in full: Rejects the Commission proposal;
and Calls on the Commission to withdraw its proposal;
. The resolution also records a subsidiarity objection from the Italian Chamber of Deputies.
The legal basis is Article 113 TFEU, which puts tax files under a special legislative procedure: Parliament is consulted, not co-legislating, and the Council decides by unanimity. Parliament’s own legislative-tracking service describes it as The proposal is subject to the special legislative procedure, requiring unanimous support for its adoption in Council, following consultation of the European Parliament.
and records that A compromise submitted to Coreper on June 2026 failed to secure sufficient support, leading to the withdrawal of the proposals from the ECOFIN agenda.
It puts the rejection vote at 181 in favour to 439 against with 38 abstentions — a figure I have only from that tracking service, so attribute it there rather than to the resolution itself.
The Parliament’s own procedure file records the file’s status as Awaiting final decision
, with no event logged since 17 June. A general approach is a Council negotiating position. It is not adoption, and adoption still needs every member state. No pouch tax is in force anywhere in the EU by virtue of this file.
Poland’s flavour ban clears its standstill tomorrow
The most pouch-specific movement in the window is in the Single Market transparency system. Poland notified a draft act in May — TRIS 2026/0223/PL — whose stated effect includes extending the ban to include flavoured nicotine pouches and other nicotine products that are not currently covered by Directive 2014/40/EU or the provisions of the Act – it is proposed that these products should only be available through the pharmaceutical channel, subject to the relevant authorisations;
.
Five member states filed detailed opinions — Romania, Slovakia, Sweden, Greece and Italy — and Czechia filed comments, extending the standstill to 6 November 2026. On 14 October Poland answered all of them. Its core argument, to Slovakia: Directive 2014/40/EU does not regulate the market for nicotine pouches, and Member States therefore retain the competence to lay down national rules for this product category.
And its characterisation of its own measure: The draft does not provide for a ban on the sale of nicotine pouches as a product category; it merely restricts the placing on the market of products with a taste or smell other than tobacco. Nicotine pouches can therefore still be traded lawfully.
It supports the flavour restriction with Polish survey data that users aged 13–20 most often choose nicotine pouches with mint and menthol flavours (30.5 %), sweet and candy flavours (29.2 %) and fruit flavours (23.6 %), whereas only a small percentage of users choose tobacco-flavoured products.
Sweden’s detailed opinion took the opposite line, arguing that the Government’s assessment is that, in practice, the regulation could lead to a de facto ban on the sale of new products containing nicotine.
It also put comparative-risk arguments to Poland — a member state’s submissions in a trade-barrier procedure, not regulator findings — and Poland’s reply rejects them: Poland does not share the assumption that tobacco-free nicotine products should be treated as harm reduction tools.
The detail I would not have predicted is a negative. The European Commission filed no detailed opinion and no comments on the nicotine pouch provisions at all. Its only intervention, on 24 June, concerned the disposable e-cigarette limb, because that one is notifiable pursuant to Article 24(3) of Directive 2014/40/EU
. Pouches sit outside the Directive, so that route does not reach them. The gap that a revised Directive would close is visible here as an absence in a file, which is a better demonstration than any amount of argument.
The standstill expires tomorrow. After that Poland may adopt. Nothing in the file says it will.
And the Directive revision itself has a published date
On 11–12 October the Commission published the factual summary report of its public consultation on revising the tobacco rules. The public consultation was open from 22 May to 14 August 2026 on the “Have Your Say” portal.
, and Following the removal of one exact duplicate, 41,693 submissions were retained for
analysis.
The finding worth carrying is the Commission’s own screening of that response set: This screening identified 32 campaigns, comprising 196
groups of ten or more fully identical responses and totalling 14,418 contributions (34.6% of 41,693).
, of which 27 campaigns accounting for 34.1% of all contributions were classified as opposing stricter regulation
. The report also records that Regarding financial support from the tobacco industry, 169 of the 787 respondents from business associations, civil society organisations and the ‘Other’ category (21.5%) reported having received such support during the previous five years.
And it carries its own disclaimer: the consultation activities cannot be considered as a representative sample of the views of the EU population.
Nicotine pouches appear exactly twice in the seven-page report.
On timing, I had been treating “TPD3” as trade-press shorthand with no Commission document behind it, and that was wrong. The call for evidence published on 18 May 2026 is a formal registered initiative, PLAN/2026/578, led by DG SANTE, with LIKELY TYPE OF INITIATIVE Legislative initiative
and INDICATIVE TIMETABLE December 2026
, on an Article 114 TFEU basis. It names pouches in its own problem definition — novel products such as nicotine pouches and heated herbal products, are currently not covered by the Directives.
The register’s entry for the proposal itself is still marked upcoming with no publication date, and the call for evidence carries the standard hedge: All elements of the initiative described, including its timing, are subject to change.
What is next, and what to watch
Two dates. Poland’s standstill ends on 6 November. ECOFIN meets on 9 November seeking a general approach that needs unanimity to survive. If it holds, the file moves; if it does not, this will be the second collapse of the year.
Beyond that, the synopsis report promised in the call for evidence has not appeared, and the indicative December date for the revision proposal is four weeks away. The regulation tracker carries the country-level picture, and the national positions these EU-level moves sit on top of are on the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany pages.
Circulating without a primary document
Four things I saw reported this week that I am not printing as fact, and why.
- “The Commission has responded to the eight ministers” — the joint letter is real and we covered it on 11 October. No reply exists on any Commission surface I can reach: its press-corner search returns a newest item mentioning nicotine dated 29 September, and nothing on pouches since 2 April.
- The rapporteur’s reported appeal to the Irish Presidency — the collapse he is responding to is documented. The appeal is not: no Parliament document, press release or committee minute carries it.
- “Sweden is the brick wall in the tax talks” — plausible, partly corroborated by Sweden’s filings elsewhere, and named in no document.
- “TPD3 entered its next phase on 14 August” — 14 August is the closing date of the public consultation. The date is real; the phase event did not happen.
Sources
- Council of the European Union, CM 4725/26, notice of meeting and provisional agenda, Economic and Financial Affairs, 23 October 2026.
- European Commission, COM(2025) 580 final, proposal for a Council directive on the structure and rates of excise duty applied to tobacco and tobacco related products (recast), 16 July 2025.
- European Parliament, P10_TA(2026)0211, legislative resolution of 17 June 2026; procedure file 2025/0580(CNS); and the Legislative Train entry, edition of 25 October 2026 (a Parliament research-service product, not an act).
- European Commission, Technical Regulation Information System, notification 2026/0223/PL, and messages 116084 (Commission comments, 24 June 2026), 116378 (Sweden’s detailed opinion, 16 July 2026), 117636 and 117637 (Poland’s replies, 14 October 2026).
- European Commission, factual summary report of the public consultation on the revision of EU rules on tobacco products and tobacco advertising, Ares(2026)9595105, PDF, 11–12 October 2026.
- European Commission, call for evidence for an impact assessment, Ares(2026)5013006, PDF, 18 May 2026, and the Better Regulation register entry for initiative PLAN/2026/578.
All documents read 5 November 2026. Council and TRIS documents were obtained from the institutions’ own public registers; EUR-Lex was not reachable from here and was not needed.
