Germany challenges Euro ban on tobacco adverts

FROM ROGER BOYES IN BONN

The complaint will be filed in Luxembourg by the beginning of September, weeks before the general election. It is therefore bound to figure in Helmut Kohl's re-election campaign.

A spokeswoman for the German Economic Ministry said Bonn was arguing that health policy fell under the jurisdiction of member states, and not the European Union. Moreover the ban - welcomed by the British Government earlier this year as a "giant leap forward in the fight to reduce smoking" - violated freedom of speech and companies' ownership rights on brand name products.

The German Chancellor, who smokes a pipe, tried unsuccessfully to rally Tony Blair to his cause before the ban came into force. Now his main ally appears to be Austria, which will hold the EU presidency from July, when the complaint will be lodged with the European court.

The EU yesterday formally approved the ban, with Germany and Austria voting against and Spain and Denmark abstaining. Member states will have three years, under the terms of the ban, to remove tobacco advertising on billboards and in cinemas, and four years from newspapers and magazines.

Sponsorship of sporting and cultural events must end within five years - except for Formula One motor racing, which was given eight years. Tobacco company logos on clothing are also supposed to change to avoid direct linkage with cigarette packet colours and designs. Once the ban is fully applied, the only publicity allowed by 2006 will be in specialist tobacco trade journals and shops selling cigarettes.

German publishers and cigarette manufacturers fiercely oppose the ban. The newspaper Die Woche took the unusual step recently of publishing a four-page supplement - sponsored by British American Tobacco - in favour of smoking.

Pavel Kohout, the former Czech dissident writer, contrasted the new freedom of Eastern Europe, since the collapse of communism with the new restraints introduced by Western Europe.

Opposition to the tobacco ban seems to run across German party lines.

The challenge to Brussels comes as Herr Kohl is striking increasingly Euro-sceptical poses in the hope of winning conservative voters. In the past few months he has repeatedly criticised the European Commission for interfering with German affairs.

Next page: Rape victims relive Jakarta riot horror