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Smoking bans take effect in France, Germany

Berlin: Two of the last smokers’ bastions in western Europe crumbled on Tuesday as both Germany and France brought in wide-reaching bans on smoking in public places.

For Germany, which only banned its soldiers from smoking in tanks a few months ago, Tuesday was far from easy. For France too, where the morning cafe-clope — coffee and cigarette — is almost as normal as brushing your teeth, the mood is less than cheery.

Two of the last smokers’ bastions in western Europe saw the introduction of new smoking laws on Tuesday.

The third of Germans who smoke will be banned from doing so in the pubs and restaurants of most of the country’s 16 states, with the rest of the country to follow later this year. In France the exemption for bars and cafes from a no-smoking law introduced last year will come to an end.

Civil rights activists in both countries, who used protests to help delay the onset of the bans, say the restrictions represent some of the harshest attacks on their freedom in recent times. The usually rule-loving Germans who will be banned from smoking in pubs and restaurants are trying to find civil ways of disobeying the law. As exemptions will be made in establishments with separate, closed-off rooms, some pubs are erecting smokers’ tents.

Ulrich Kasisk, the boss of a Berlin pub chain, has invented a “no smoker tunnel” — a twisting plasterboard construction with windows which can be adapted to any space, creating a smoke-free zone between the bar and the toilets. “The right to smoke in a pub is one of the last vestiges of freedom and it’s worth fighting for,” said Mr. Kasisk, who is organising a referendum in the hope of overturning the ban.

Eckkneipen — small local pubs — in the western state of Saarland on the French border and Saxony in the east will remain exempt as long as the sole person serving is the owner. Across Germany smoking clubs have set up, where members pay a subscription to meet in privately rented rooms to smoke and drink. Fines of between €5 and €100 for guests and €1,000 for pub owners are not due to be enforced in Germany until July 1 by “orderlies” who will intervene after being contacted by other pub goers. As a result, many pubs have said they will simply ignore the ban until then.

Germans’ reluctance to embrace the ban, despite their close attention to health and the environment, has much to do with history. Smoking is seen as a symbol of the relaxations after the Nazi era, during which Adolf Hitler cracked down on the habit. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2008

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