Bulgaria May Scale Down Proposed Vape Ban

Bulgarian legislators may have backed off their plan for an immediate prohibition of all vaping products. However, some level of product restriction is still likely in the near future.

On Feb. 12, the Bulgarian National Assembly voted 197-0 to advance a bill that would ban the sale, distribution, and advertising of all vaping products, including zero-nicotine vapes.

However, according to Bulgarian bTV News, legislators shifted gears less than two weeks later, and began discussions of banning only disposable vapes, or possibly banning flavored products.

The apparent reason for possibly changing the bill is the difficulty of gaining European Commission consent through the European Union’s Technical Regulations Information System (TRIS). EU member states must notify the Commission, and give citizens and other member states a three-month period to raise objections to the law before implementing product restrictions. If the Commission or another EU country objects, Bulgaria would have to delay the law further.

"Our main goal is to achieve this effective ban on vaping in the country,” the National Assembly’s health committee chairman Kostadin Angelov said, according to bTV. “At the same time, we understand that if we do it the way we have done it, it will probably take a long time for the [TRIS] notification of the law. That is, in two or three years we will not change anything in the country."

Banning disposable vapes or flavors would also require Bulgaria to receive permission through the TRIS process, but the European Commission has allowed such restrictions in the past, so barring some unusual obstacle, assent for a disposable or flavor ban could be accomplished in as little as three months. 

On the other hand, banning all vaping products—which are legal and regulated by EU law—would be difficult, time-consuming, and probably impossible. Such a ban would probably be considered interference in the EU’s single-market economy, which is the bar for allowing product restrictions in individual member states.

No EU country has attempted to impose an outright vape ban since vapes became a legal EU product in the 2014 Tobacco Products Directive (TPD). EU regulation offers protection for manufacturers and consumers, preventing an entire category of regulated products from being banned.