Belgian supermarkets will be able to sell cigarettes again next year

Starting January 1, 2027, Belgian supermarkets will once again be allowed to sell tobacco. The federal government has accepted the Constitutional Court’s ruling overturning the tobacco ban. A political deal is at play behind the scenes.

Discriminatory measure

Since April of last year, grocery stores larger than 400 m² in Belgium have been prohibited from selling tobacco products; smaller stores were only subject to a display ban. However, Buurtsuper.be, the advocacy group for independent supermarkets, and tobacco manufacturer Philip Morris Benelux took the matter to the Constitutional Court to challenge the ban, arguing that it violates the principle of equality: the distinction between large and small grocery stores is discriminatory and therefore unlawful, they claimed. The Court agreed.

The government was given until January 1, 2027, to introduce a new regulation, but will not do so. Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke (Vooruit) has accepted the decision because he wanted to secure a different ban: a ban on flavored vapes. To do so, he had to make a concession to the French-speaking liberal party MR.

“Horse-trading”

Luc Ardies of Buurtsuper.be responds with satisfaction: “We never intended to let the economic interests of our members take precedence over public health. What we absolutely wanted to avoid, however, is that based on a highly arbitrary criterion, such as the number of square meters, one store would be granted exclusive sales rights at the expense of another.” But Perstablo, the federation of newspaper and tobacco retailers, is angry and speaks of “horse-trading at the highest level.”

If cigarettes return to supermarkets, they will certainly no longer be visible, as the display ban on tobacco products also applies to larger stores. Not all supermarkets are expected to start selling cigarettes again. Last week, the retail federation Comeos and the independent business organization Unizo called for a ban on the sale of tobacco products to young people, following the example of the recently introduced ban in the UK. Such a measure should lead to tobacco and vapes eventually disappearing completely from society.

Lidl has already announced that it will definitely not resume selling tobacco products. The discount chain was the first in Belgium to stop selling tobacco. A majority of Belgian supermarkets are run by independent business owners: it remains to be seen what they will decide.