Maltese smokers who tried out a European online smoking cessation programme had a higher success than their European counterparts, European Health Commissioner Tonio Borg said.

Around 2,000 Maltese signed up for iCoach, which is also available as a mobile phone app, and around 42 per cent managed to stop smoking after three months, Dr Borg said in a press conference this morning.

The local success rate was higher than that reported quit rate of 37 per cent.

This tool is part of the EU Ex-Smokers are Unstoppable campaign, which is running for three years and, among other things, aims to drop the rate of smokers in the EU by two per cent, amounting to 2.4 million smokers.

When asked whether he was confident the Tobacco Directive would go through before the next EU presidency, Dr Borg said he was.

While pointing out that he could only predict the outcome, as the decision did not depend on the European Commission but on approval by the European Parliament and Council of Ministers, Dr Borg said that, so far, it had moved “very well so far”.

In a matter of six months, member states in the council of ministers approved the common approach to the directive in June and now the negotiations with Parliament with start…it is a great victory to me,” he said.

The chances that the end of the year the negotiations would start and finish “is very good,” he added.

Hopefully it would be approved by the next MEP elections in May next year.