Opinion on Proposal for a directive of the Council on the structure and rates of excise duty applied to tobacco and tobacco related products

11.12.2025

Ms Aurore Lalucq

Chair

Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs

BRUSSELS

Subject: Opinion on Proposal for a directive of the Council on the structure and rates of excise duty applied to tobacco and tobacco related products (COM(2025)0580 – C100207/2025 – 2025/0580(CNS))

Dear Madam Chair,

The Committee on Legal Affairs has examined the proposal referred to above pursuant to Rule 113 on recasting of Parliament's Rules of Procedure.

Paragraph 3 of that Rule reads as follows:

“If the committee responsible for legal affairs considers that the proposal does not entail any substantive changes other than those identified as such in the proposal, it shall inform the committee responsible for the subject matter thereof.

In such a case, over and above the conditions laid down in Rules 187 and 188, amendments shall be admissible within the committee responsible for the subject-matter only if they concern those parts of the proposal which contain changes.

However, amendments to parts of the proposal which remain unchanged may, by way of exception and on a case-by-case basis, be accepted by the Chair of the committee responsible for the subject matter if he or she considers that this is necessary for pressing reasons relating to the internal logic of the text or because the amendments are inextricably linked to other admissible amendments. Such reasons must be stated in a written justification to the amendments.”

Following the here attached opinion of the Consultative Working Party of the Legal Services of the Parliament, the Council and the Commission, which has examined the recast proposal, and in keeping with the recommendations of the Rapporteur, the Committee on Legal Affairs considers that the proposal in question does not include any substantive changes other than those identified as such and that, as regards the codification of the unchanged provisions of the earlier act with those substantive amendments, the proposal contains a straightforward codification of the existing text, without any change in its substance.

The Committee on Legal Affairs considered the matter at its meeting of 3 December 2025, and arrived at the above conclusion unanimously.

Yours sincerely,

Ilhan Kyuchyuk

Encl.: Opinion of the Consultative Working Party

Annex

CONSULTATIVE WORKING PARTY

OF THE LEGAL SERVICES

Brussels, 6 October 2025

OPINION

FOR THE ATTENTION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

THE COUNCIL

THE COMMISSION

Proposal for a directive of the Council on the structure and rates of excise duty applied to tobacco and tobacco related products

COM(2025)0580 of 16.7.2025 – 2025/0580(CNS)

Having regard to the Inter-institutional Agreement of 28 November 2001 on a more structured use of the recasting technique for legal acts, and in particular to point 9 thereof, the Consultative Working Party consisting of the respective legal services of the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission met on 24 September 2025 for the purpose of examining the aforementioned proposal submitted by the Commission.

At that meeting, an examination of the proposal for a Council Directive recasting Council Directive 2011/64/EU of 21 June 2011 on the structure and rates of excise duty applied to manufactured tobacco resulted in the Consultative Working Party’s concluding, without dissent, that the proposal does not comprise any substantive amendments other than those identified as such. The Working Party also concluded, as regards the codification of the unchanged provisions of the earlier act with those substantive amendments, that the proposal contains a straightforward codification of the existing legal text, without any change in its substance.

F. DREXLER E. FINNEGAN D. CALLEJA CRESPO

Jurisconsult Jurisconsult Director-General