Back to Brussels
Just arrived in Brussels, via Eurostar, for the grandly named World Nicotine Congress which starts tomorrow.
Back in December I was one of the first people to write about this new event. Given that all nicotine and tobacco-related conferences are essentially anti-smoking nowadays, I thought it unlikely that I would be invited to speak.
Nevertheless, I know Elise Rasmussen, the founder of WNC, quite well so we had a chat and I was eventually added to the list of speakers, albeit on the undercard. Evening Insights Reception: Global Perspectives will feature four or five panelists, including me, but, as the word ‘reception’ suggests, delegates will be drinking (and possibly eating) at the same time so let’s see how that works out.
Either way it’s nice to be back in Brussels because I used to come here several times a year. According to my diary, however, the last time was on February 6, 2020, six weeks before the first Covid lockdown.
Long before that my very first visit to the city was in 2000. It followed a conference in Seville in September 1999 that was hosted by Smokepeace, an umbrella ‘organisation’ whose members consisted of smokers’ rights groups across Europe. (Apart from Forest, only one or two still exist.)
Founded in 1992, I think, Smokepeace was run a bit like an All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG). In other words, it had a secretariat – a Brussels-based public affairs agency – which ran the operation and organised all the meetings, most of them (for the agency’s convenience) in Brussels, although I remember one that took place half way up a mountain in Switzerland. (I never found out why.)
I missed out on that Alpine experience, but I did go to one or two meetings in Brussels before Smokepeace was quietly wound up in 2001. (That’s a whole other story.) However my trips to Brussels were only just beginning.
One visit was a bit of a rush because I invited myself, at very short notice, to a meeting of ‘EU experts, civil society and social partners’ who had been convened ‘to support the [European] Commission's Impact Assessment on the forthcoming initiative on smoke-free environments’.
Things didn’t go entirely to plan because, when the meeting began, around 20 stakeholders were sat around a large conference table. Asked to introduce ourselves, I explained who I worked for, whereupon several people refused to let the meeting continue if I was allowed to remain. And if didn’t leave, they would.
There was a standoff that lasted ten or 15 minutes until the facilitator came up with a compromise. If I agreed to leave, she and her colleagues would hear me in private after the main meeting had finished. I agreed, reluctantly, but only because I was aware that some participants had travelled a long distance to be there and if the meeting was abandoned they would have had a wasted journey.
I also felt a bit sorry for the facilitator because she was put in a difficult position, but what disappointed me most was the lack of support I got from other stakeholders, especially the guy who was representing the hospitality industry. As I pointed out to him later, if I could defend his members’ right to choose a policy on smoking that best suited their business, surely he could have defended the right for consumers to be represented in that meeting. Instead he sat there and said nothing.
After that I became an increasingly regular visitor to Brussels, attending numerous meetings and even, on one occasion, giving evidence to an EU parliamentary committee. And that led, eventually, to the launch of Forest EU in 2017. Forest EU was a relatively short project (four years) but our man in Brussels, Guillaume Perigois, did a great job in difficult circumstances.
Anyway, the venue for the first World Nicotine Congress is The Hotel, a 27-storey building off Avenue Louise, an area I know quite well because I often stayed in a smaller, more modest hotel not far from here.
Described as a ‘landmark’ building, The Hotel was built in the Sixties and opened in 1969 as the Brussels Hilton so it’s not new, but in comparison to many of the neighbouring buildings, which it towers above, it looks and feels quite modern. In fact, it was purchased by a Swedish investment group in 2010 and has been completely refurbished.
My room is on the 13th floor so I’ve got a pretty good view.
Below: The Hotel, Brussels. Photo: Jean-Marc Pierard/iStock.
