TOBACCO INDUSTRY
Warsaw – Ahead of a meeting later this month where the EU will decide whether to adopt World Health Organization recommendations to cut funding to European tobacco farms, Polish producers are making their voices heard.
Issued on: 08/11/2025 - 15:31
2 min Reading time
Several hundred Polish tobacco growers travelled to Warsaw on 3 November to protest WHO recommendations to cut EU subsidies. © Adrien Sarlat / RFI
Poland is the European Union’s third largest producer of tobacco, behind Italy and Spain, according to the EU’s most recent available figures.
Tobacco is also grown in France, Greece, Croatia, Hungary and Bulgaria, with the EU producing 140,000 tonnes as of 2018 – a figure that has been in decline since 1991, when the bloc produced 400,000 tonnes.
The Wor…
TOBACCO INDUSTRY
Warsaw – Ahead of a meeting later this month where the EU will decide whether to adopt World Health Organization recommendations to cut funding to European tobacco farms, Polish producers are making their voices heard.
Issued on: 08/11/2025 - 15:31
2 min Reading time
Several hundred Polish tobacco growers travelled to Warsaw on 3 November to protest WHO recommendations to cut EU subsidies. © Adrien Sarlat / RFI
Poland is the European Union’s third largest producer of tobacco, behind Italy and Spain, according to the EU’s most recent available figures.
Tobacco is also grown in France, Greece, Croatia, Hungary and Bulgaria, with the EU producing 140,000 tonnes as of 2018 – a figure that has been in decline since 1991, when the bloc produced 400,000 tonnes.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is encouraging the EU to cut funding to tobacco farms and envisage a future without the sector – debates that will be on the agenda at the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in Geneva from 15-22 November.
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Fears for families
Several hundred Polish tobacco producers from across the country gathered in front of the Chancellery of the Prime Minister in Warsaw on Monday to put pressure on the country’s minister of agriculture not to turn the WHO recommendations into European law.
Among them was Paulina, who told RFI her fears: “Our families will lose their jobs and their livelihoods.”
Hers is one of 30,000 families in Poland who make their living from growing tobacco. Since their livestock farm went bankrupt, they have been living solely off their 12 hectares of tobacco plantations.
“If they cut our agricultural subsidies as they want to do, how do you expect us farmers to survive?” she asked.
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‘Those who want to will continue to smoke’
Fellow protester Wiesław travelled to Warsaw from a region near the Ukrainian border** **known for its tobacco crops. He says he understands the WHO’s health argument, but considers the stifling of European production hypocritical.
“Yes, our cigarettes will have a negative impact on health. But do you think those produced in Brazil, Argentina or India, for example, will be harmless? Because that’s where we’re going to import them from. Those who want to smoke will continue to smoke,” he argued.
Tobacco remains the leading cause of preventable death in the European Union, responsible for an estimated 700,000 deaths annually, according to WHO data.
In the EU as a whole, roughly a quarter of the population aged 15 and over smokes, although this varies widely between countries. Sweden has the lowest proportion of smokers at 8 percent and Bulgaria the highest at 37 percent, according to Eurostat figures from August.
France came in 13th, with a figure of 27 percent.
This article was adapted from a report in French by RFI’s correspondent in Warsaw, Adrien Sarlat.
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