Arnold Andre v. Landrat des Kreises Herford

A snus importer challenged the validity of a European Directive that directs member states to prohibit the marketing of any tobacco products designed for oral use, except those tobacco products designed to be smoked or chewed. The Court held that the Directive properly derived its authority from Article 95 EC, which provided the community with rule-making authority to ensure the internal consistency of the community market. The Court further held that adoption of the Directive was supported by sufficient scientific evidence and it satisfied the principles of proportionality and of non-discrimination.  The Court approved of the adoption of the Directive and sent the case back to the national courts for further proceedings.

Arnold Andre GmbH & Co. KG v. Landrat des Kreises Herford, Case C-434/02, Court of Justice of the European Union (2004)

  • European Union
  • Dec 14, 2004
  • European Court of Justice
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Parties

Plaintiff Arnold Andre GmbH & Co. KG

Defendant Landrat des Kreises Herford

Legislation Cited

International/Regional Instruments Cited

Related Documents

Type of Litigation

Tobacco Control Topics

Substantive Issues

Type of Tobacco Product

"To satisfy its obligation to take as a base a high level of protection in health matters, in accordance with Article 95(3) EC, the Community legislature was thus able, without exceeding the limits of its discretion in the matter, to consider that a prohibition of the marketing of tobacco products for oral use was necessary, and in particular that there was no alternative measure which allowed that objective to be achieved as effectively. As the Advocate General observes in points 116 to 119 of his Opinion, no other measures aimed at imposing technical standards on manufacturers in order to reduce the harmful effects of the product, or at regulating the labelling of packagings of the product and its conditions of sale, in particular to minors, would have the same preventive effect in terms of the protection of health, inasmuch as they would let a product which is in any event harmful gain a place in the market. It follows from the above considerations that, with respect both to the objective of ensuring a high level of protection of human health given to the Community legislature by Article 95(3) EC and to its obligation to comply with the principle of proportionality, the contested prohibition cannot be regarded as manifestly inappropriate."
"Arnold André essentially submits that, having regard to the state of the scientific information available to the Community legislature in 2001, when Article 8 of Directive 2001/37 was adopted, on which it moreover relied in amending the rules governing the warning referred to in Article 5(4) of that directive, maintenance of the prohibition of marketing tobacco products for oral use was disproportionate in relation to the objective pursued and did not take account of the development of that scientific information. The answer to that argument must be that, while some experts could from 1999 call into question the assertion that, as the 16th recital in the preamble to Directive 92/41 puts it, ‘these new products cause cancer of the mouth in particular’, all controversy on that point was not eliminated at the time of adoption of Directive 2001/37. Moreover, while part of the scientific community accepted that tobacco products for oral use could be used as substitute products for cigarettes, another part challenged the correctness of such a position. From that situation it must be inferred that the scientific information which could have been available to the Community legislature in 2001 did not allow the conclusion that consumption of the products in question presented no danger to human health. Moreover, like all other tobacco products, those for oral use contain nicotine, which causes addiction and whose toxicity is not disputed. Now, first, it had not been shown at the time of adoption of Directive 2001/37 that the harmful effects of those products were lesser in that regard than those of other tobacco products. Second, it had been shown that they presented serious risks to health, which the Community legislature had to take into account. In those circumstances, it cannot be maintained that, contrary to the provisions of Article 95(3) EC, the prohibition which follows from Article 8 of Directive 2001/37 was laid down without account being taken of the development of scientific information."