New one on me is this Pipefitter, wheres this being mooted? Off for "Her Indoors" supply next week!!!

Best Regards - Taggy

Where did you see or hear about this?
I can't see it, the taxes paid on ciggies or alcohol are no different to any other item.
Will they restrict the amount of say shoes or cheap leather belts that can be brought back??
Spirits sometimes can be bought cheaper in the UK especially with Xmas offers (1 litre for £10 etc.), but obviously tobacco products are different.

Robby

I am a big supporter of the EU but this is what annoys me - its supposed to be a free market! If you have paid duty in the EU country that you bought them in you should be able to bring back what the heck you like!

Why don't they just reduce taxes and there would be no black market. If say ciggies were £3 for 20 then nobody would bother bringing ciggies back - simple.

Robby

Whats the point.

I got rather excited when I flew from Teesside earlier this month, it didn't last long though, when I came through departures the duty free shop was in front of me and stairing me straight in the face was a big sign saying 5ltr bottles of smirnoff vodka for only £35, I thought to myself, I'll have some of that and I'd pick it up on my return, on getting closer to the sign, in very small letters it read........................

Non EU passengers only.

Dave, you don't need to worry about such things

I would take it with a pinch of salt.
There is no way the cig allowances can be reduced to 400pp.
Why? because it is clearly stated within the EU "laws" that whilst each member state can put "guidelines/limits" on allowances, the limit for any EU member state must not be lower than 800 pp.

Discussions merged and transferred from topics in Costa Blanca, Costa del Sol and Majorca forums.

David

Why don't they just reduce taxes and there would be no black market. If say ciggies were £3 for 20 then nobody would bother bringing ciggies back - simple.

Don't be silly Robby, that's never going to happen because for a start making cigs easily affordable goes against the whole ethos of trying to stop people smoking and how are our comrades in power going to prop up the NHS with all the taxes lost on each packet of cigs at £3.?

I am a big supporter of the EU but this is what annoys me - its supposed to be a free market! If you have paid duty in the EU country that you bought them in you should be able to bring back what the heck you like!

I'm afraid not, that's an illusion and a misconception of what the term "free market" means.
Free market is being able to sell or export goods to other EU member states, in other words no sanctions on any one particular type of goods, but what you can import into each country does have restrictions and if you took the time to investigate the member states, you'll find that they all have various tariffs of what you can bring and take out of the respective countries.

The term "free market" does not mean what you hope it means....sorry
Another example: people say we are in the EU, therefore we have free movement across the member states, afraid not, while the UK is a member state, the UK did not sign the Schengen agreement and this is why Spain asked for Advanced Passenger Information (API) and why we continue to have our own passport/border controls.
And all I can say to that is......thank god we didn't sign, otherwise we would have all kinds of "nice" people walking into the country.
You can't have it both ways.
Sanji

Daily Star, 19th Nov 2008.

Its ok, its a false alarm, it was in the daily star

lol i was gonna end it with ... Mickey Mouse paper ... but I didn't wanna get done for slander ... Mickey might not be happy being compared with the Daily Star

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/cm/601/601975/601975en.pdf
First paragraph, page 4

Council Directive 92/12/EEC
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CONSLEG:1992L0012:20000701:EN:PDF
Under article 9 ..page 8 of the document

well sanji reading that lot has given me a thumping head.... my reply comes from the play stop the world.. MUM-BO JUMBO RHUBARB RHUBARB TIKERTY BOO BARB YAK YAK YAK

its no wonder no one understands fully EEC law

wiz

The artical in todays Express did mention "Booze Cruises".How it can apply to passengers on this form of transport and not passengers returning by flights ect says it all.A load of bunkum.
But it did go on to state the regulation covering "Booze Cruises" is up for renewal.

Booze Cruises are not proper transport, and aren't that common from the UK anyway. They simply go out into international waters, open up the shop for a while then come back to the same port. Or they may dock somewhere else in the middle of the trip but the Booze Cruisers don't get off. Their tickets are specifically for going on board to shop whilst the ship moves around.

well sanji reading that lot has given me a thumping head.... my reply comes from the play stop the world.. MUM-BO JUMBO RHUBARB RHUBARB TIKERTY BOO BARB YAK YAK YAK

its no wonder no one understands fully EEC law

I didn't expect you to read it all
I specifically pointed you to the relevant section where it clearly states that the guidelines or allowances cannot be lower than 800 cigs pp....so unless the EU parliament amends that ruling, there should be no way that the allowance or guidelines (whatever you want to call it) can be reduced to 400 cigs pp ...as per the original post.

Sanji...sending you two pills for the headache

I had heard that it was the non EU allowance that was changing.
At moment allowed 200 cigs,but they were reducing that to 20!!! Can't remember where I read that,it was around 2 months ago.Could have been on a Mexico website, I have visited, I will see if I can find it and let you know.

Denny

I dont smoke, but after reading that lot...i feel like a fag!! Ahh well only a few days now before i will be able to enjoy breathing "Her Indoors" polution, indoors again!!! Benidorm here we come!!!

Best Regards - Taggy

Don't be silly Robby, that's never going to happen because for a start making cigs easily affordable goes against the whole ethos of trying to stop people smoking and how are our comrades in power going to prop up the NHS with all the taxes lost on each packet of cigs at £3.?

It's not as silly as you may think. As long as ciggies are available cheaper the UK will lose out on ALL the taxes received by other countries due to buying abroad. They would "prop up" the NHS with all the taxes they gain, the one's they are losing now. As long as the price gap is so big there will be a black market, close the gap and there will be no black market in ciggies - simple. I agree it's probably not going to happen and until other EU countries raise there prices there will always be a massive amount of smokers smoking non-UK taxed ciggies. So in effect, the UK are still treating smoking illnesses on the NHS, diseases from where other countries are taking the taxes.

Robby