Hungary’s tobacco wholesale system under scrutiny

The EU Commissioner for Internal Markets, Elzbieta Bienkowska, has said that the European Commission could launch an infringement procedure against Hungary over suspected discrimination in its granting of the country’s exclusive wholesale tobacco license, according to a Portfolio.hu story relayed by the TMA.

The license was granted to the consortium of BAT and Tabán Trafik without an open tender having been launched, a decision that was challenged by Imperial Tobacco Magyarország, JTI Hungary and Philip Morris Magyarország.

“There are other tobacco monopolies in Europe, but nowhere else is it so visible that only people with a good contact with the government have the possibility to sell the tobacco,” the commissioner reportedly said.

The EC’s Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs [small- and medium-sized enterprises] asked the Hungarian government for a report on the wholesale tobacco monopoly issue this spring, but experts in Brussels were reportedly not convinced by the government’s arguments.

Hungry is said to be being investigated over a new tax on the tobacco industry that the country introduced earlier this year.