New year’s resolution…2 January 2013 
On the first October of 2012 I attended a meeting held at the Eurocare office in Brussels. This was a meeting organized by EUCAM with the purpose of developing a collective strategy on alcohol marketing, to be shared and implemented by NGOs and health organizations through Europe. The meeting was attended by people from Eurocare, IOGT-NTO, EPHA (the European Public Health Alliance), APYN (the Alcohol Policy Youth Network), Active Europe and of course EUCAM.
Besides discussing some of the plans for 2013 of each organization (top secret stuff, of course…), we all agreed on striving for the mutual goal of a total alcohol marketing ban. In practice this means that we will work to achieve an alcohol advertising ban as well as a ban on alcohol sponsoring. In our definition of a marketing ban, we do not include a ban on price marketing or on Corporate Social Responsibility campaigns. We refer to what the public defines as alcohol marketing (in order to follow the rules of communication: we want to be short and clear). Another kind of wording for our desire can be: a ban for commercial communication on alcohol. In fact we want the same for alcohol as we have already for tobacco.
We all agreed that self-regulation of alcohol marketing is not functioning and that we do not support the idea that self-regulation has to be strengthened. Therefore we decided not to spend any more time in discussions about the strengthening of self-regulation. Self-regulation is an instrument of the industry to prevent statutory regulations. We will strive for improving statutory regulations (effective volume restrictions) because only these take us forward on the road to a complete ban. In other words: to a necessary protection of young people from the harmful impact of alcohol marketing and sponsoring.
If the European Commission or the industry wants to install an independent board/ commission/comity for the monitoring of self-regulation or for taking decisions about violations of the self-regulation codes, the organizations present at the meeting decided not to take part in this kind of initiatives, nor to promote these. We will simply say: “This is none of our business and we won’t spend time on it.”
Everyone agreed that it will be crucial to do things in the right order. This means it’s primarily important to put the focus on national policy change instead of European policy change. If more and more countries decide to go for a ban or for specific statutory regulations, than finally Europe has to follow. And it would seem there is currently a momentum for this.
We also came to the conclusion that we are currently missing critical data on alcohol marketing investments and data about exposure of young people to alcohol marketing. The industry is aware of the value of this data and for that reason it recently blocked the delivery of exposure data in Ireland. We will try to raise this important issue on European Commission level.
It was a pleasant and very productive meeting, not only did we learn of each other’s goals and plans but more importantly we started to band together. Even with all the public support that we already experience, health organizations such as our own are relatively small and feeble when compared to the multinational organizations we find ourselves fighting against. That’s why it’s so important for us to form a united front, put our differences behind us and communicate consistently across the board. If we can do this, than 2013 will be the year that we stand together and become greater than the sum of our parts. Now, how’s that for a new year’s resolution?
Wim van Dalen, president of EUCAM
President of the European Center for Monitoring Alcohol Monitoring
Utrecht, the Netherlands,
December 27th 2012
Want to contribute to ‘Talking Alcohol Advertising’? If you are working in the field of alcohol marketing, wheter as a scientist, policy maker, health care worker or otherwise and want to share your latest results, campaigns or discuss a subject that is currently hotly debated in your country, please contact us at eucam@eucam.info. We would love to hear from you.
Sweden & the UK: Transnationally regulating alcohol marketing?20 December 2012 
In this installment of our guest written blog ‘Talking Alcohol Advertising’ Ella Sjödin of Sweden’s IOGT-NTO, shares her thoughts on the current status of the prohibition on televised alcohol marketing in Sweden.
“Even though there is a clear prohibition against alcohol advertising on radio and TV in Sweden I daily see alcohol advertising on several Swedish TV channels. By broadcasting from the UK, TV channels, so far, have managed to circumvent Swedish legislation. In 2011 we filed a complaint against these broadcasts to the Swedish Broadcasting Authority, by referring to the EU's Audiovisual Media Services Directive. The authority has now required that the UK stops alcohol advertising in broadcasts to Sweden. It's a real progress for us to hear that the Swedish authorities have taken a stand against the alcohol marketing and decided to proceed with our case. I also think it's important to note that there is a political consensus and strong public support for the prohibition against alcohol marketing on TV. A poll in 2011 showed that 80 % of the population supports the prohibition and that 78 % thinks that it's wrong that the TV channels circumvent Swedish law. I think that you can also note the resistance towards alcohol marketing from the regulators. The Swedish government earlier this year appointed a commission to further look into how to regulate and monitor the alcohol marketing on TV and digital media. The study is expected to be ready in the end of March 2013.
Coming back to our complaint, I have to say that it is exciting to test the possibility for Sweden to cooperate with the United Kingdom through the so-called principle of the country of reception, introduced in the new Audiovisual Media Services Directive. This principle means in this case that Swedish law applies even when an advert is broadcasted from another country but entirely or mainly targets Sweden and a Swedish audience. Just as in our case, where the broadcasts on Swedish channels only are shown in Sweden for a Swedish audience.
Now we wait to see whether the UK will chose the line of the Swedish Broadcasting Authority and stop alcohol advertising on Swedish TV or if the case will continue to the EU level.”
Ella Sjödin
European officer at IOGT-NTO. Follow Ella on Twitter!
Want to contribute to ‘Talking Alcohol Advertising’? If you are working in the field of alcohol marketing, wheter as a scientist, policy maker, health care worker or otherwise and want to share your latest results, campaigns or discuss a subject that is currently hotly debated in your country, please contact us at eucam@eucam.info. We would love to hear from you.
Crime pays: industries profiting from alcohol are stronger than countries 26 November 2012  A dramatic and surprising story broke out in Lithuanian media this autumn about a MP of the now expired parliament. Mr. V. Matuzas allegedly received a 16 thousand euro bribe for introducing amendments to several laws, including the Alcohol Control Law. The surprise is not the alleged bribe, since Lithuania ranks No. 50 in the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index (2011). The real surprise is that a suspected mediator of the bribe, lobbyist A. Romanovskis, was actually jailed for two weeks after a court order and criminal investigation was opened against MP Matuzas. This is an unusually harsh legal response, to a quite usual activity – profit seeking industries using legal and illegal methods to manufacture conditions most favourable for their profits. Not many things surprise us, since in Lithuania we have been toughened by some hair rising practices (media industry leaking personal contacts of MPs promoting alcohol control and inciting to violence against them, the famous blackmail against Lithuanian government by Norwegian Oil giant “Statoil” regarding alcohol retail at night, etc.).
Legal lobbyist A. Romanovskis, who is no stranger in working with the alcohol and tobacco industry, has paid the alleged bribe in smaller instalments to the Charity and Relief Fund, which according to Lithuanian media, is controlled by Matuzas. The acknowledged original author of the amendments to the Alcohol Control Law according to the media was an association called Investor's Forum, whose many members are foreign owned companies, including tobacco producer Philip Morris Baltic. And allegedly in exchange for “charity” Matuzas has proposed and voted in favour of the amendments, effectively revoking a ban on alcohol advertising which should have come into effect on January 1st 2012. It’s important to note, that this measure was introduced in the end of 2007 as “a compromise in a pressure suit” suggested by the alcohol industry – as yet another effort to postpone restrictions for alcohol advertisements on TV.
And here is the situation: the legal battle is just beginning to sizzle, suspects are still “presumed innocent”, yet the industry is already enjoying the fruits of the investment – they have avoided a drop in consumption which should have been expected from previous experience. When in 2007 restrictions on alcohol advertisement on TV were introduced it soon translated into positive public health outcomes – among others very importantly – a significant drop in alcohol intoxications in children aged 7-14. The number of alcohol intoxicated children was increasing fast up to 2007, when it reached the peak of 105,2 cases per 100 thousand population and then suddenly reversed and dropped to 67,9 in 2010.
The amendments to this and several other Laws that have been passed under suspicious circumstances are still operational. The Chairman of the Parliamentary Ethics and Procedure Commission A. Salamakinas has commented that “The Seimas Statute does not provide a rule on what to do in cases, when it turns out that a bribe was paid for bills that were signed into laws. We haven't had such precedent, so there is no accepted practice what to do in similar cases.” This occurs to us as quite convenient and justifies the conclusion: crime pays. Legal battles against corrupt officials backed by the industry might take years and there are no clear procedures on how to revoke fabricated amendments.
It is obvious that an industry that is capable and willing to exert such pressure on legal and democratic structures in any country should not be part of the policy decision making processes regarding their products. Lithuanian experience with this and other cases of industries influencing elected officials at the expense of public health outcomes provides yet another piece of evidence for stripping ALL for profit industry (media, tourism, food and retail, agriculture you name it) from stakeholder’s position in developing alcohol and tobacco control policies.
Small and relatively weak EU countries are in clear and present danger to become cheap test arenas – a cost effective way for the industry to assess the strength of the legal and democratic system. Newly gained experience and skills can be easily refined and used in more expensive countries. The industry is very skilled in using newly gained experience multiple times in similar situations internationally. This kind of outsourcing seems to be very dangerous for democracy. In this globally connected world, the shared experience of NGOs might help make this kind of behaviour become less profitable. Because the European Union cannot afford a flourishing, creative and influential alcohol and tobacco lobby.
Nijole G. Midttun is board member of the National Coalition for Tobacco and Alcohol Control
Vaida Liutkute, is PhD student in Public Health and member of National Tobacco and Alcohol Control Coalition
Aurelijus Veryga, is President of Lithuanian National Tobacco and Alcohol Control Coalition and Baltic Tobacco and Alcohol Control Coalition
Learn more about the National Tobaco and Alcohol Control Coalition>>
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