The Impact of Tobacco Control Policies in the EU: Comparing Old and New Member States

Studlar, Donley T and Frisbee, Stephanie J. (2009) The Impact of Tobacco Control Policies in the EU: Comparing Old and New Member States. In: UNSPECIFIED. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

This paper compares the changes in the structures, process, and outcomes related to tobacco control and population health between (1) the “old EU” 15 members and (2) the recent 12 accession members, mainly from Central and Eastern Europe. Based on the stages of the Tobacco Epidemic Model and coercive policy transfer through the EU, we expect to find that policies in these two sets of countries will increasingly converge and that establishment of stronger tobacco control policies will improve population health indicators in both parts of Europe, but more rapidly in Accession members than in old-EU members. Utilizing a large data set from WHO Europe, we compare both groups from 1990 to the present. In the old EU, more restrictive tobacco control policies have been adopted over time through both internal memberstate processes and through policy transfer from the EU. Accession countries had few discernible tobacco control policies in place, but increased their policies enacted through having to adhere to the acquis communautaire of the EU as well as through other processes. We find convergence between Older and Accession countries both in number of policies adopted and in several smoking and population health outcomes although longer-term differences between men and women remain in Accession countries. Europeanization in tobacco control appears in both groups of countries, but the ”coercive policy transfer” of the Accession process apparently acts to speed up policy learning and outcomes in CEE countries.

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