The EU Commission has appointed the six members of its newly-established independent advisory panel (IAP) assisting member states and the Commission in determining whether tobacco products have a characterizing flavour.
It has published also a reserve list of suitable candidates.
The panel members were named in a Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety (DG Sante) newsletter as:
- Prof. Andrea Buettner, Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging, Freising, Germany and Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany;
- Dr. Garmt Dijksterhuis, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Amsterdam, The Netherlands;
- Dr. Jan van Amsterdam, Department of Psychiatry, Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands;
- Mr. Emmanuel Vanzeveren, It makes sense SPRL, Braine Le Comte, Belgium;
- Dr. Wouter Visser, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), Bilthoven, The Netherlands;
- Assoc. Prof. Efthimios Zervas, Hellenic Open University, Patra, Greece.
‘These members are highly qualified independent experts covering the areas of sensory, statistical and chemical analysis,’ DG Sante said…
‘The members have been selected by an evaluation panel [pursuant to Commission implementing decision (EU) 2016/786], and appointed in their personal capacity to act independently in the public interest.’
The first meeting of the panel is due to take place in Brussels on June 1.
The IAP is tasked with issuing opinions on whether a tobacco product has a characterising flavour, and with specifying and updating, as appropriate, the methodology for the technical assessment of products as set out in the Commission implementing decision (EU) 2016/786.
In addition, the panel might be consulted by the Commission on other matters relating to the assessment of characterising flavours.
The panel will be able to request input from a technical group of sensory and chemical assessors that is still to be established by the Commission via a public procurement procedure.