The Tobacco Control Scale 2025 in Europe

This report presents the results of a 2025 survey assessing tobacco control activities in 37 European countries, using the Tobacco Control Scale (TCS). The TCS was first introduced by Luk Joossens and Martin Raw in their 2006 paper, The Tobacco Control Scale: a new scale to measure country activity. The data used for the 2025 survey refers to legislation in force as of 1 January 2026, prices of tobacco products in 2024, and mass media campaigns conducted between July 2022 and June 2024. Any legislation, price increases, or campaigns introduced or implemented after these dates are not included. The TCS allocates points to each policy, with a maximum score of 100: price (30 points), smoke free public places (22 points), comprehensive advertising bans (13 points), large health warnings (10 points), cessation support (treatment) (10 points), age limitations (new: 7 points), mass media campaigns (new approach: 3 points), combatting illicit trade (3 points) and tobacco industry interference (2 points). Countries which have not ratified the WHO FCTC will lose one point. HEADLINE RESULTS :• For the first time, more countries had a lower score in 2025 than before. Mainly two reasons: in several countries heated tobacco products were not regulated in the same way as cigarettes and secondly, cigarette prices were mostly not adapted to inflation.• 11 countries increased their score since 2021. The Netherlands (+9), Slovenia (+8), Belgium (+5) and Portugal (+5) saw the strongest increases in their score. Notable positive policy developments since 2021 include a significant improvement in smokefree policy in Slovenia and Portugal, and a strengthening of price- and advertisement policies in the Netherlands and Belgium.• 23 countries receive a lower score than in 2021. Romania (-25) and Italy (-15), Greece (-10) and Czechia (-9) saw the most significant declines in their score. The drops in Romania, Italy and Czechia are mainly due to the exclusion of heated tobacco products from smokefree- and/or advertisement-regulations.• Nine leading countries (Ireland, the UK, the Netherlands, France, Norway, Finland, Belgium, Hungary, and Slovenia) scored between 60 and 80 points. Ireland achieved the highest score, with 80 out of 100 thanks to its comprehensive set of tobacco control policies.• Nine countries performed modestly, scoring between 50 and 54 points. The remaining 19 countries failed to reach at least 50 points and therefore need to do much more.• Eight countries (up from five in 2021) had very low scores, with fewer than 45 points. The lowest overall scores were recorded in Bosnia & Herzegovina and Switzerland.• The UK and Ireland achieved the highest cigarette price scores, while Turkey and the Russian Federation had the lowest. The period from 2020 to 2024 was marked by high inflation, and most countries did not sufficiently adjust price and/or tax levels. Turkey lost 9 points in its price score due to high inflation. Only 4 of the 37 countries improved their price scores (the Netherlands, Belgium, Slovenia, and Slovakia). This underlines the urgent need for an updated EU Tobacco Products Tax Directive including an automatic indexation mechanism. See www.tobaccocontrolscale.org