Wolfgang Fecke, Executive Director at Association of European Cancer Leagues, shared a post on LinkedIn:
”This year’s ECToH conference with about 900 participants, organised from the Association of European Cancer Leagues member LILT Milano Monza Brianza, sent a clear message to lawmakers: Tobacco remains a leading cause of preventable death and cancer in Europe, and the EU should urgently adapt its Tobacco Directives to address the new generation of nicotine products that pose growing risks to public health.
The EU’s tobacco directives helped reduce smoking prevalence across all European countries. They were, however, built for a different era, and they are not yet equipped to address a market increasingly shaped by heated tobacco, e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches – products contributing to a worrying rise in nicotine use among young Europeans.
We call on the European Commission to strongly and swiftly revise the Tobacco Products Directive and the Tobacco Advertising Directive to cover not only tobacco, but all nicotine-containing products, to close existing regulatory gaps, and to set a strong minimum standard, one that protects citizens across the EU while leaving Member States free to go beyond.
ECToH 2026 has proved itself again to be a great opportunity for the entire European tobacco control community to come together. The Association of European Cancer Leagues and our member cancer societies are proud to be a driving force behind this conference for many years. It is where the people working on this issue across our continent share what is working, learn from one another, and build the collective momentum that progress in tobacco control depends on. That is what makes ECToH so valuable.
We are proud to announce that ECToH will return in 2029, hosted in Brussels by Kom op tegen Kanker, the Belgian Cancer Society. Convening in the EU capital in the months leading up to the 2029 European elections, ECToH 2029 will be an important moment for the European tobacco control community to engage with incoming policymakers.”
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