Time for EU tax change?

摘要

The European Commission has to submit a report to the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament with its views on tobacco tax policy in the EU. Professor Sijbren Cnossen of the University of Maastricht reviews and evaluates EU tobacco tax policies. According to a report with the telling title Tobacco or Health in the European Union, financed by and prepared for the European Commission (2004), smoking is the single largest cause of avoidable death in the European Union (EU), killing 625,000 smokers each year (one in seven of all deaths) and involving gross costs estimated at between 1.04% and 1.39% of the EU's GDP in 2000.