Brussels, Oct 19 - The European Union's health chief will bow to industry pressure when he delivers his much-awaited strategy to tackle alcohol abuse across to bloc next week, industry and EU Commission sources said on Thursday.
The EU's brewing and drinks companies look set to win their battle -- one of the biggest lobbying campaigns ever seen in Brussels -- against anti-tobacco style proposals which were reportedly planned by EU Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou.
However, officials of the Cypriot commissioner moved quickly on Thursday to deny that proposals such as a ban on alcohol sponsorship and advertising, warning labels on alcoholic products and an EU-wide minimum age were ever in the pipeline.
"Industry has been tilting at windmills," Philip Tod, spokesman for Kyprianou told Reuters.
"These are misleading claims. There is no easier battle to win than when there is nor war in the first place."
But both industry and Commission sources told Reuters that Kyprianou had been forced to back down on his original plans.
"The heart has been ripped out of it," one Commission source said, adding that an agreement by all 25 EU Commissioners became unattainable and that a number of member states would eventually cave into industry pressure when it came to approving the paper.
The EU executive, which meets next week, is expected to take a similar approach to that taken on the issue of obesity in 2005 by setting up an "alcohol platform" or forum which will bring industry and health experts together to share best practice.
Under his obesity platform, Kyprianou put the emphasis on self-regulation and pulled away from delivering legislation from Brussels.
"Self-regulation has shown to be the best way forward and industry responds more positively to this approach," a spokesman for CEPS, the European spirits organisation, said.
The move by Kyprianou will, however, anger a number of NGOs and EU member states who had sought a more prohibitive approach, most notably the Nordic countries led by Finland, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency.
"Basically you had the Scandinavians on one hand and the Mediterranean states on the other with the Germans, British and Irish in the middle," an industry source explained.
"But it seems that the majority of the 10 new member states from Eastern Europe would have killed the plan."