When the European Commission opened its Call for Evidence on revising the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) and the Tobacco Advertising Directive (TAD), it likely expected the usual mix of industry lobbying and public-health advocacy. Instead, it received one of the largest, most geographically diverse responses in the history of EU tobacco and nicotine policy, with a message that is hard to ignore.
Today, Path to Smoke-Free and We Are Innovation are publishing “The TPD Revision and Europe’s Innovation Economy: A Review of the Evidence,” a data-driven analysis of the full consultation record. The findings go beyond nicotine policy. They address how Europe regulates innovation itself.
The Numbers Do Not Lie
Of more than 82,000 submissions received between May 18 and June 15, over 90% raised at least one substantive objection to the Commission’s proposed direction. Only about 2% expressed outright support for a stricter approach. Submissions came from 138 countries; academic and research input alone came from 43.
This was not a narrow, single-interest pushback. Opposition deepened with expertise: 96% of academic and research submissions were critical, along with 94% of companies, NGOs, and other organizations, and 93% of individual citizens. Consensus this broad across such different constituencies is rare in any EU consultation.
Three Voices, One Underlying Concern
Our analysis breaks the submissions down by stakeholder group, and each speaks its own language:
- Citizens talk about autonomy: the right of informed adults to choose between legal products and fear that further restrictions will push them toward the black market rather than protect them.
- Companies, NGOs, and retailers talk about jobs, investment, and regulatory predictability: the practical costs of uncertainty for value chains that span manufacturing to the corner shop.
- Academics and researchers talk about evidence: the case for regulation that reflects the real, differentiated risk profile of combustion versus non-combustion products.
Different vocabularies, but a shared thread runs through all three: a call for proportionate, evidence-based regulation rather than a one-size-fits-all approach that treats every nicotine product as if it carries the same risk as a cigarette.
Why This Is an Innovation Story, Not Just a Nicotine Story
The most striking finding in the consultation may be the one unrelated directly to smoking. Submissions from universities and research institutions, including IE University in Spain, Northeastern University London, and the University of Delaware, converge on a warning familiar to anyone who has watched Europe’s innovation gap widen over the past decade. Uncalibrated regulation raises fixed compliance costs, blunts the commercial incentive to differentiate on quality, and injects uncertainty into long-horizon investment decisions.
As the University of Delaware put it in its submission, when long investment cycles collide with regulatory reopening, the cost of capital rises “across the entire innovation economy,” a signal that reaches beyond the tobacco and nicotine sector. That is the real stake of this revision: not just how Europe treats vapes and nicotine pouches, but how it treats the R&D-intensive industries it wants to attract.
Five Priorities for a Sound Revision
Drawing on the consultation record and our research, the briefing paper sets out five priorities we believe should anchor a legally and economically defensible revision:
- Risk differentiation must be the foundation of the regulatory framework.
- Innovation costs, including the R&D disincentive effects of regulatory uncertainty, must be assessed explicitly and dynamically.
- Economic and employment impacts across manufacturers and retail must be quantified, not assumed away.
- Illicit-trade displacement must be anticipated and mitigated, not treated as a footnote.
- Causal evidence standards, benchmarked against the Regulatory Scrutiny Board’s 2025 review criteria, must be met before any measure is adopted.
Read the Full Briefing
The full paper includes detailed breakdowns by stakeholder group and issue area, submission volumes by country, and the methodology behind our classification of over 82,000 texts read in full, in their original language, and coded against a consistent framework.
The consultation record is now closed. What Brussels does with it will shape not only the future of nicotine policy in Europe, but the broader signal European regulation sends to innovators everywhere.
