Leading international medical journal The Lancet today appeals for John Dalli’s tobacco products directive not to be “derailed” and provides extensive coverage of the Health Commissioner’s resignation.
The Lancet has also interviewed Mr Dalli who told the journal he was the only safeguard to prevent any weakening of the directive now that progress had been stalled.
“The EU’s revised Tobacco Products Directive – which was set to place substantial new restrictions on tobacco companies’ promotion of cigarettes and smokeless tobacco, including banning e-cigarettes – is dangerously close to stalling, and further delay will raise serious questions about whose interest the EU Commission is promoting,” the journal said in a press release issued yesterday to promote its feature.
The journal also questioned why the directive was put on hold, despite the fact that its text had been cleared to progress to the next stage of implementation.
It also pointed out that two days after Mr Dalli’s resignation, the offices of anti-tobacco campaigners in Brussels were subject to a “sophisticated burglary, in which laptops and documents were stolen, but other valuables left untouched”.
It referred to a podcast special report about the controversy, which includes an interview with Mr Dalli, where he explains the circumstances for his resignation and the fact that he was only given 30 minutes to inform his family and lawyers of the request for his resignation.
When asked about the safeguards that are in place to prevent any weakening of the directive now that progress has stalled, Mr Dalli told The Lancet News podcast: “The safeguard was me.”
Monika Kosinska, Secretary General of the European Public Health Alliance, one of the organisations whose offices were burgled in Brussels, and a co-author of The Lancet’s comment piece, also spoke to the podcast, describing the delays to the revised directive as “paralysing”.
She said there was no reason to immediately think that everyone in the commission was going to be behind the directive.