Tobacco products in the European Union Common Entry Gate (EU-CEG): A tool for monitoring the EU tobacco products directive

INTRODUCTION: Under the European Union (EU) Tobacco Products Directive (2014/40/EU) (TPD), manufacturers and importers of tobacco products are required to report information to the European Commission (EC) and Member States (MS) on products intended to be placed on the market. We describe the distribution of notifications to the EU Common Entry Gate (EU-CEG) and identify key fields for improvement on reporting cigarettes or roll-your-own (RYO) tobacco. METHODS: A cross-sectional analysis of secondary data reported in the EU-CEG was conducted for tobacco products notified within EU-CEG between June 2016 and October 2019 for 12 EU MS. Analysis of compliance to specific regulations for priority additives that refer to cigarettes and RYO was conducted for 10 EU countries. RESULTS: Overall, 39170 tobacco products were notified. This included 16762 (42.8%) notifications of cigars, followed by cigarettes 11242 (28.7 %), waterpipes 3291 (8.4%), cigarillos (n=1783), pipe (n=1715), RYO (n=1635), chewing tobacco (n=1021), novel tobacco products (n=839), herbal products for smoking (n=535), other (n=258), nasal (n=74) and oral tobacco (n=15). In cigarettes and RYO tobacco products, the proportion of ingredients notified in all countries that contained an unknown Chemical Abstract Services (CAS) number was 3.8% and 2.1%, respectively. The proportion of underreporting flagging of priority additives ranged from 15.9% in Malta to 41.3% in Lithuania, the mean proportion of underreporting of the variable ‘priority additive’ for the 10 countries together was 24.7%. CONCLUSIONS: In the EU-CEG data base, for the period of analysis, a significant number of product notifications took place while large variations in the number of types of tobacco products notified across EU countries was noted. The timely monitoring of these data is needed so that products non-compliant within the EU-CEG system are assessed.