On April 3, 2014, the European Parliament and the Council adopted Directive 2014/40/EU on tobacco products (hereafter: directive on tobacco products). General objective of the directive for tobacco products is the legislative, regulatory and administrative approach provisions of the member states concerning the rules governing the construction, the presentation and sale of tobacco products and related products.

The directive facilitates the smooth functioning of the internal market for tobacco and related products products, protecting human health, especially young people. In addition, article 1 of the Tobacco Products Directive explicitly refers to the obligations of the European Union (EU) under the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control ("FCTC").

The pan-European traceability system was launched on 20 May 2019 for the cigarettes and rolling tobacco and is going to include the rest tobacco products (e.g. cigars, cigarillos) on May 20, 2024.

Basic provisions

Articles 15 and 16 of the Tobacco Products Directive aim to address it illegal trade in tobacco products through the introduction of traceability systems and safety features for these products. The systems will help to reduce it marketing of tobacco products that do not comply with the Tobacco Products Directive and with other tobacco control legislation. They will also reduce artificially cheap supplies of illicit tobacco products that contribute to the initiation of smoking and affect its general distribution. Consequently, systems will play an important role in the protection of public health, state budgets and legal finances operators.

Traceability system

In the context of the traceability system (Article 15 of the Tobacco Products Directive):

• All packaging units of tobacco products produced, intended or placed on the EU market should bear a unique identification code (with predetermined information about the place and date of manufacture, the destination etc).
• Their movements must be recorded throughout the supply chain (from manufacturing unit to the last economic operator before the first store retail sale).
• Information about recorded movements is stored by independent data storage units (with which manufacturers and importers of tobacco products will have to sign contracts, which will be approved by the Commission), and the data will be accessible to the authorities (Member States and Commission) for law enforcement purposes.

In this way, the traceability system will make it possible to track it traffic of legal tobacco products (monitoring) and will give the public authorities the ability to determine at which point the product was channeled into the illegal market, or the reverse(locate).

In the framework of the safety features system (Article 16 of the Product Directive of tobacco), the packaging units of tobacco products placed on the EU market must carry an inviolable security feature, consisting of visible and invisible data. So consumers and authorities will be able to appoint whether the product is genuine or illegitimate.

In the context of the traceability of tobacco products, the circulation of tobacco products must be recorded from the manufacturer to the last economic operator before the first retail outlet. In Article 2 paragraph 3 of the executive regulation 2018/574(EE) defines the first retail outlet as the establishment where they are available products for the first time on the market (i.e. they are available to consumers who are established in the EU), including automatic product vending machines tobacco.Operators of retail outlets are required to obtain:

• Economic operator identification code
• Identification codes for all managed facilities