2 March 2016. The High Level Conference “Combating Tobacco Industry Tactics: State of Play and a Way Forward” was held on the 2nd March 2016 at the European Parliament in Brussels. The event was organised by the Smoke Free Partnership and the Belgian Foundation Against Cancer and hosted by MEPs Gilles Pargneaux, Karl-Heinz Florenz and Benedek Jávor.

The conference brought together an audience made up of EU, international, and national policy makers, civil society organisations, and the media, in order to address the challenges posed by tobacco industry interference to health policy-making. The high-level speakers at the conference, which was moderated by Tamsin Rose, included:

• Dr. Vytenis Andriukaitis, European Commissioner for Health
• Ms. Emily O’Reilly, European Ombudsman
• Mr. Tonio Borg, Former European Commissioner for Health
• Dr. Katharina Kummer Peiry, Senior Legal Advisor, FCTC Secretariat; providing a message from Dr. Vera Da Costa e Silva, Head of the FCTC Secretariat and
• Ms. Alison Cox, Director Cancer Prevention, Cancer Research UK and SFP Board Member

The Conference aimed to highlight the challenges in the implementation of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and specifically Article 5.3, which requires governments to take steps to protect public health from the vested interests of the tobacco industry. The event aimed to demonstrate the continued tobacco industry interference in tobacco control policy by drawing on the experience of highlevel participants.