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Sweden is a country with a relatively smooth cooperation and common understanding with the EU. Swedes are generally content with the benefits of the membership, and its negative effects are often viewed in light of the, primarily economic, advantages.
But there is one issue which regularly bubbles up and causes public discourse about the positives of the EU membership. That is the question of the sale and consumption of snus, a tobacco-based paste or pouch which goes between the user’s upper lip and gums, which enjoys wide-spread popularity in Sweden and is part of its cultural tradition. This product, of which there exists many varieties, has been targeted by EU authorities since before Sweden became a member in 1995.
The most recent attempt at undermining snus was exposed in March 2025 when documents from the European Commission concerning the taxation and regulation of tobacco products were leaked. If approved, certain types of snus and similar, uniquely Swedish, products will effectively see their price raised by 60 percent at retail, as the excise rate is raised by 500 percent.
This is not the first time the EU authorities have attempted to penalise snus and its derivatives seemingly out of existence. In 2022 similar plans to change the EU’s taxation directives were exposed, which would have seen the price of traditional snus nearly doubled. Repeated attempts to target snus through excessive taxation have caused widespread debate in Sweden at the very least since 2012, when the EU’s tobacco directive was reworked – heavily under the influence of an ideological blanket opposition to tobacco products, according to pro-snus interests.
Indeed, the conflict around snus has primarily been centred around the impacts of tobacco culture on public health. While snus (at least in its traditional form) is a tobacco product, its defenders in Sweden and lobbyists in Brussels have raised its advantages in getting addicts to abstain from smoking – a significantly more deadly form of tobacco consumption. Resultantly, snus does not only have its defenders, it even has advocates who are looking to challenge the presumptions about the product outside Sweden and introduce it on the European market, for the benefit of all European nicotine addicts.
Snus and the EU
Already in the early 1990s when Sweden was a prospective EU member, the consumption of snus was scrutinised by the European Commission. One of the triggers for this was the marketing of an American brand of snus-like product in Europe, by the name of Skoal. This, combined with the gap between Swedish and continental tobacco culture produced a lot of worries that snus would take over on the European markets, which was believed to be potentially disruptive of the member states’ long-term public health ambitions.
Snus was banned on the single market in 1992, but when Sweden became an effective EU member in 1995, the country was allowed an exemption from the ban, due to the cultural significance and wide-spread popularity of snus in the country. This exemption is today enshrined in Sweden’s membership treaty, and is difficult for the Commission to challenge. However, this has not meant that snus has been spared from being undermined by the Commission in other ways.
A healthy culture under attack?
The snus industry promotes its products from a public health perspective by referring to the principle of “harm reduction”, that is, offering the consumers a substitute to cigarettes with less adverse health effects. Conventionally, abstention from smoking would perhaps mean a complete abstention from all forms of tobacco and nicotine (save for a number of other more or less therapeutic alternatives, such as nicotine patches). Snus instead allows the consumer their nicotine kick, without risking the development of lung cancer and other respiratory problems that smoking carries with it.
Snus is largely credited with having made smoking a more or less marginal phenomenon in Sweden. Around five percent of the population, according to international statistics, are considered to be regular smokers, which is one of the lowest figures in the world. As such, the prevalence of smoking-related diseases is also very low in Sweden compared to similar countries.
However, adverse health effects have been connected to a particular type of snus, and it is also this type that is most directly under attack from the EU.
Traditional snus is a black or brown paste made from tobacco. Since the mid-2010s, a “white” derivative made not from tobacco (but still containing nicotine) has made inroads on the market, and has grown to become more common than traditional snus in certain segments of the population.
“White” snus, or perhaps more accurately, nicotine pouches, have received negative coverage for various risks associated with their content, and some dentists have argued that “white” snus may in fact be more dangerous to regular users than cigarettes. Alarm has also been raised about the sometimes radical flavouring of the white pouches, which has been attributed by researchers to the development of allergies in the oral cavity. Being a relatively new product, it is no wonder that there are uncertainties about the long-term effects of white snus, which must be reasonably addressed.
But unsurprisingly, the EU was in 2023 revealed to be moving towards an outright ban on nicotine pouches from the internal market, much like had been done with traditional “black” snus in 1992. A ban on “white” snus would however include even Sweden, since the new nicotine pouches are not protected by the Swedish EU membership treaty, warns interest groups and political parties in Sweden.
It is in the midst of this debate however, that the EU is also undertaking its full-on offensive against even traditional snus, which has not been implicated to the same degree in health studies. This is where the cultural bias against snus becomes apparent.
Snus unifies the left and the right
Despite the headway that Sweden has made in minimising preventable deaths from lung cancer and respiratory diseases due to snus, the bureaucratic machine of the EU does not see these advantages. It only sees a strange and foreign practice that it must combat and crush under the wheels of ever closer integration.
This has added dimensions due to snus being generally, but not exclusively, a cultural habit of ‘blue-collar’ Swedes. In the debate about the EU’s threat to the snus tradition the issue is sometimes portrayed as a conflict between the internationalist middle and upper class, and the patriotic working class. This type of rhetoric was present already in the 1994 EU referendum, where the Eurosceptic camp pressed the risk of snus being banned or regulated by the EU.
The sheer weight of the issue has made it not just an element of Eurosceptic and nationalist politics, but even of left-wing and EU-positive parties such as the Social Democrats. Commonly when the question of the snus’ future is raised, all mainstream political movements in Sweden are prepared to mark their critical stance. Whether that criticism goes beyond mere words and into action is a different thing of course, but at least superficially the political establishment of Sweden is committed to making sure Swedes will be able to keep their snus.
At its core, the snus issue demonstrates that there is sometimes a will to resist the more authoritarian tendencies of the European Union, across the political spectrum, even in a ‘well-behaved’ country like Sweden – it just needs a common point to rally around. For many Swedes, snus is not just a health benefit if compared to smoking, it is also their unique way of life and a way to maintain cultural continuity with their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents. It shows that those who wish to abolish national institutions and traditions are sometimes best countered with passion, as opposed to with rational arguments.