The hour of clever solutions may have dawned for smokers and people who want to serve them.
http://www.thelocal.de/14791/20081009/
Bavaria could relax smoking ban
Published: 9 Oct 08 12:45 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/14791/20081009/
An organization for the preservation of the Bavaria’s tavern culture, the VEBWK, has said they are thrilled that state politicians are considering easing strict anti-smoking laws in pubs.
“We have almost reached our goal on the verge of being able to live and let live in Bavaria,” VEBWK head Heinrich Kohlhuber told broadcaster Antenne Bayern on Thursday.
Bavaria’s conservative Christian Social U nion (CSU) is rumoured to be considering a relaxation of the law after the party lost its long-held absolute majority in recent state elections. Kohlhuber attributes the party’s embarrassing show as a clear signal that voters disapprove of the smoking ban.
“Apparently the CSU wasn’t listening to the people,” Kohlhuber said, adding that he hopes his organization can work together with the state government to create a new smoking law.
One solution, he said, would be allowing establishments small than 100 square metres to decide whether they wanted to allow smoking. Pub and restaurant owners could then display their smoking status with a sign at their entrance, Kohlhuber suggested.
The nationwide smoking ban was implemented on January 1, 2008 – though it was not enforced until July 1. Many German bar owners have openly flouted the law, complaining that it could threaten their livelihoods as revenues suffered. Several states have also reported half-hearted or non-existent enforcement by city officials.
On July 30, Germany’s high court ruled that the new smoking ban in the states of Baden-W?rttemberg and Berlin was unconstitutional.
The decision involved a case brought by bar owners in Berlin and T?bingen, and a club owner in Heilbronn, who contended that small establishments should be exempt from the ban because they don’t have the possibility to create a separate smoking area.
The decision from the Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe states that current smoking ban rules are to remain in effect until the end of 2009, when new legislation will have to be drawn up. But the six to two ruling said the ban was “an especially heavy burden” and “unacceptable” for small bars and infringes on the freedom to carry out one’s profession because of the high proportion of smoking customers, the court said.
The ruling stated that bars allowed to let customers smoke again must be smaller than 75 square-metres and will have to visibly identify their business as a smoking establishment. Such bars will not be allowed to serve food and will have to deny entry to customers younger than 18-years-old.
Corner pubs that rely heavily on a drinking clientele and can prove “existential disadvantages” are also eligible for the exception to the law, the court said.
Other suits against the smoking ban await lower court rulings in several states, and judges in Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein and Rhineland-Palatinate have already nullified the law for single-room pubs if the owners themselves are serving drinks.
DDP/The Local (news@thelocal.de)
Bavaria’s election
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12342263&fsrc;=rss
Oktoberfuss
Oct 2nd 2008 | MUNICH
From The Economist print edition
A disastrous showing for Bavaria’s ruling Christian Social U nion
DDP/The Local (news@thelocal.de)
Bavaria’s election
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12342263&fsrc;=rss
Oktoberfuss
Oct 2nd 2008 | MUNICH
From The Economist print edition
A disastrous showing for Bavaria’s ruling Christian Social U nion
WHEN G?nther Beckstein, Bavaria’s premier, helped open this year’s Oktoberfest—the biggest folk festival in the world, boast Bavarians—on September 20th, he hoped its popularity would rub off on his party, the Christian Social U nion (CSU). In vain. In Bavaria’s election eight days later the CSU lost its absolute majority for the first time in 46 years. It now needs a coalition partner to stay in power. To Bavarians, the end of one-party rule feels like a revolution. To the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, it is a worrying omen for the federal election due next September. And to all of Germany’s big political parties, the results seem proof that they are in deep trouble.
Bavaria has Germany’s lowest unemployment, one of its fastest-growing economies and its lowest debt per head. Clinging to Catholic and folk traditions but revelling in progress, Bavarians have fashioned a regional identity stronger than any other in Germany. For decades they looked to the CSU to champion their interests. In other states Ms Merkel’s Christian Democratic U nion (CDU) speaks for mainstream conservatives; in Bavaria it is the CSU.
But a long period in power breeds arrogance. Edmund Stoiber, who led the CSU to a two-thirds majority in 2003, got bureaucrats to work longer hours and students to cram nine years of education into eight without enough planning. His ousting in 2007 by Mr Beckstein, the state’s interior minister, and Erwin Huber, who became party chairman, subtracted charisma without adding competence. The ageing conspirators enraged innkeepers by implementing Germany’s toughest smoking ban, and everybody else when the state-owned Bayerische LB said it would lose over €1 billion ($1.4 billion) in subprime punts. “I have no trust in Beckstein and Huber,” says Bernhard, a technology consultant sporting Bavarian Lederhosen.
On September 30th Mr Huber was forced out as party chairman, to be replaced by Horst Seehofer, the federal agriculture minister. Mr Beckstein quit a day later. Yet even these beheadings do not portend a real revolution. Voters who turned against the CSU turned towards their ideological kin. The Freie W?hler, a haven for CSU rebels, took a tenth of the vote and got into the legislature.
The CSU would have a hard time governing with such a “club of individualists”, says Heinrich Oberreuter of the Academy for Political Education in Tutzing. Its likeliest partner is the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), which re-entered the legislature after a 14-year absence. Bavaria’s pro-business policy will continue, though the FDP is more likely to protect civil liberties than the CSU.
Strikingly, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the main opposition force in Bavaria but partner of the CDU/CSU in Germany’s “grand coalition” government, did not profit from the CSU’s woes. Its 18.6% share of the vote was its worst ever. There is no sign that its countrywide erosion has stopped. Besides the FDP and the Freie W?hler, the Greens were the other big winners.
A demoralised CSU will make life harder for the grand coalition. The Bavarians resent Ms Merkel for squelching tax-cut proposals with which they hoped to stave off electoral disaster. When the government’s plans clash with the interests of their voters, as they may over reform of inheritance tax, the CSU will oppose them. The grand coalition may also soon lose its majority in the upper-house Bundesrat.
Ms Merkel needs Bavarian votes to win re-election, but she should not despair. The Freie W?hler have no national presence and the FDP is a potential ally, so she could keep many of the votes the CSU lost. As for the CSU, its “aura of invincibility is gone,” says Mr Oberreuter. Newcomers drawn to Bavaria by its economic success are more likely to programme laptops than wear leather shorts.
?
Elections | 29.09.2008
Bavarian Conservatives Lose State Majority in Damaging Defeat
?
Beckstein suffered defeat on what was described as a “black day” for conservatives
?
Bavaria’s Christian Social U nion (CSU) lost its decades-old absolute majority as voters defected to smaller parties in a state election seen as a test of support ahead of national polls next year.
Computer projections showed a swing of more than 17 percentage points away from the sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), forcing it to look for a coalition partner.
The CSU polled 43.4 percent of the vote on Sunday, Sept. 28, in its worst showing in half a century. The center-left Social Democrats (SPD), which govern in a grand coalition with Merkel’s party in Berlin, polled 18.6 percent, a decline of 1 percentage point from the last state election in 2003.???
CSU Secretary General Christine Haderthauer said the disastrous result was a black day for the party, which had ruled unchallenged for more than 40 years.
In the last state elections in 2003, the CSU polled 60.7 percent of the vote in the strongly Catholic state, where some of Germany’s leading companies have their headquarters, including Siemens and BMW.
The party’s stated intent had been to retain its absolute majority in the 180-seat Parliament in Munich. “We have clearly failed to achieve our goal,” Haderthauer said.
Beckstein refuses to shoulder the blame
State Prime Minister Guenther Beckstein, who was elected last year after longtime leader Edmund Stoiber was toppled in a party revolt, ruled out stepping down to take responsibility for the poor showing.
“The people have shown that they want a CSU-led government, but that they do not want the CSU to govern Bavaria alone,” he said, adding that the party would immediately start to look for a coalition partner.
The most likely contenders are the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), who polled 8 percent of the vote to enter Parliament after an absence of 14 years. The liberals are eyeing a coalition with the CDU at the national level next year, but shifting alliances in the party landscape could make a wider alliance possible.
Another possibility is the Free Voters, a conservative party that will make its parliamentary debut after winning 10.2 percent on a platform seeking greater local power.
The environmentalist Greens won 9.4 percent, but the pro-labor Left Party at 4.3 percent failed to clear the 5 percent hurdle needed to get into parliament.???
The CSU’s good showing in Bavaria in the 2004 general election helped elevate Merkel to power, but its popularity has been steadily eroding under Beckstein and party Chairman Erwin Huber.??
Losses by the state-owned bank BayernLB, the scrapping of a prestigious super-fast train link to the Munich airport and a controversial smoking ban combined to fuel voter discontent.
Analysts said the party’s poor performance could increase pressure on the CSU leadership, which had been criticized for running a tepid campaign and failing to galvanize voters.???
The party ran a campaign highlighting the CSU’s past successes while pushing for greater tax breaks for commuters and better conditions for working mothers.
State losses could have national ramifications
The dramatic losses suffered by the CSU in Bavaria have ramifications well beyond the borders of Germany’s largest state.
The shockwaves reached as far as Berlin, where Merkel rules in an uneasy grand coalition with the left-of-center Social Democrats (SPD).???
?Bildunterschrift:
Analysts said that the outcome could increase tension between the coalition partners and hurt Merkel’s chances of retaining power in federal elections scheduled for September 2009.
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who has been picked by the SPD to challenge Merkel for the chancellorship, said the vote had far-reaching implications.
“We are not talking about an election result,” he said, “but about an earthquake that has been unleashed by this election in Bavaria.”
But he didn’t mention that his party’s own performance of just over 18 percent was also its worst-ever showing in the prosperous state of laptops and lederhosen.
Analysts said that voters punished the CSU for clinging to traditional social values and Catholic Church doctrine in a Europe that has become increasingly secular.
It did not help that Beckstein and party Chairman Erwin Huber lacked the charisma of Stoiber and failed to galvanize voters to support a fresh vision.
Recent state elections have seen coalitions between the CDU and Greens in Hamburg, and the SPD eyeing an alliance with the Greens and the Left in Hesse, where there is a minority CDU caretaker government.
The defeated SPD candidate in Bavaria, Franz Maget, even suggested a four-party coalition to unseat the CSU, arguing that the ruling party had morally lost the right to govern.
While the Greens said they would support such a move, the FDP said it was not interested in “a gaudy coalition of anarchists.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7533132.stm
?
Page last updated at 13:30 GMT, Wednesday, 30 July 2008 14:30 UK
?
Bavaria has Germany’s lowest unemployment, one of its fastest-growing economies and its lowest debt per head. Clinging to Catholic and folk traditions but revelling in progress, Bavarians have fashioned a regional identity stronger than any other in Germany. For decades they looked to the CSU to champion their interests. In other states Ms Merkel’s Christian Democratic U nion (CDU) speaks for mainstream conservatives; in Bavaria it is the CSU.
But a long period in power breeds arrogance. Edmund Stoiber, who led the CSU to a two-thirds majority in 2003, got bureaucrats to work longer hours and students to cram nine years of education into eight without enough planning. His ousting in 2007 by Mr Beckstein, the state’s interior minister, and Erwin Huber, who became party chairman, subtracted charisma without adding competence. The ageing conspirators enraged innkeepers by implementing Germany’s toughest smoking ban, and everybody else when the state-owned Bayerische LB said it would lose over €1 billion ($1.4 billion) in subprime punts. “I have no trust in Beckstein and Huber,” says Bernhard, a technology consultant sporting Bavarian Lederhosen.
On September 30th Mr Huber was forced out as party chairman, to be replaced by Horst Seehofer, the federal agriculture minister. Mr Beckstein quit a day later. Yet even these beheadings do not portend a real revolution. Voters who turned against the CSU turned towards their ideological kin. The Freie W?hler, a haven for CSU rebels, took a tenth of the vote and got into the legislature.
The CSU would have a hard time governing with such a “club of individualists”, says Heinrich Oberreuter of the Academy for Political Education in Tutzing. Its likeliest partner is the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), which re-entered the legislature after a 14-year absence. Bavaria’s pro-business policy will continue, though the FDP is more likely to protect civil liberties than the CSU.
Strikingly, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the main opposition force in Bavaria but partner of the CDU/CSU in Germany’s “grand coalition” government, did not profit from the CSU’s woes. Its 18.6% share of the vote was its worst ever. There is no sign that its countrywide erosion has stopped. Besides the FDP and the Freie W?hler, the Greens were the other big winners.
A demoralised CSU will make life harder for the grand coalition. The Bavarians resent Ms Merkel for squelching tax-cut proposals with which they hoped to stave off electoral disaster. When the government’s plans clash with the interests of their voters, as they may over reform of inheritance tax, the CSU will oppose them. The grand coalition may also soon lose its majority in the upper-house Bundesrat.
Ms Merkel needs Bavarian votes to win re-election, but she should not despair. The Freie W?hler have no national presence and the FDP is a potential ally, so she could keep many of the votes the CSU lost. As for the CSU, its “aura of invincibility is gone,” says Mr Oberreuter. Newcomers drawn to Bavaria by its economic success are more likely to programme laptops than wear leather shorts.
?
Elections | 29.09.2008
Bavarian Conservatives Lose State Majority in Damaging Defeat
?
Beckstein suffered defeat on what was described as a “black day” for conservatives
?
Bavaria’s Christian Social U nion (CSU) lost its decades-old absolute majority as voters defected to smaller parties in a state election seen as a test of support ahead of national polls next year.
Computer projections showed a swing of more than 17 percentage points away from the sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), forcing it to look for a coalition partner.
The CSU polled 43.4 percent of the vote on Sunday, Sept. 28, in its worst showing in half a century. The center-left Social Democrats (SPD), which govern in a grand coalition with Merkel’s party in Berlin, polled 18.6 percent, a decline of 1 percentage point from the last state election in 2003.???
CSU Secretary General Christine Haderthauer said the disastrous result was a black day for the party, which had ruled unchallenged for more than 40 years.
In the last state elections in 2003, the CSU polled 60.7 percent of the vote in the strongly Catholic state, where some of Germany’s leading companies have their headquarters, including Siemens and BMW.
The party’s stated intent had been to retain its absolute majority in the 180-seat Parliament in Munich. “We have clearly failed to achieve our goal,” Haderthauer said.
Beckstein refuses to shoulder the blame
State Prime Minister Guenther Beckstein, who was elected last year after longtime leader Edmund Stoiber was toppled in a party revolt, ruled out stepping down to take responsibility for the poor showing.
“The people have shown that they want a CSU-led government, but that they do not want the CSU to govern Bavaria alone,” he said, adding that the party would immediately start to look for a coalition partner.
The most likely contenders are the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), who polled 8 percent of the vote to enter Parliament after an absence of 14 years. The liberals are eyeing a coalition with the CDU at the national level next year, but shifting alliances in the party landscape could make a wider alliance possible.
Another possibility is the Free Voters, a conservative party that will make its parliamentary debut after winning 10.2 percent on a platform seeking greater local power.
The environmentalist Greens won 9.4 percent, but the pro-labor Left Party at 4.3 percent failed to clear the 5 percent hurdle needed to get into parliament.???
The CSU’s good showing in Bavaria in the 2004 general election helped elevate Merkel to power, but its popularity has been steadily eroding under Beckstein and party Chairman Erwin Huber.??
Losses by the state-owned bank BayernLB, the scrapping of a prestigious super-fast train link to the Munich airport and a controversial smoking ban combined to fuel voter discontent.
Analysts said the party’s poor performance could increase pressure on the CSU leadership, which had been criticized for running a tepid campaign and failing to galvanize voters.???
The party ran a campaign highlighting the CSU’s past successes while pushing for greater tax breaks for commuters and better conditions for working mothers.
State losses could have national ramifications
The dramatic losses suffered by the CSU in Bavaria have ramifications well beyond the borders of Germany’s largest state.
The shockwaves reached as far as Berlin, where Merkel rules in an uneasy grand coalition with the left-of-center Social Democrats (SPD).???
?Bildunterschrift:
Analysts said that the outcome could increase tension between the coalition partners and hurt Merkel’s chances of retaining power in federal elections scheduled for September 2009.
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who has been picked by the SPD to challenge Merkel for the chancellorship, said the vote had far-reaching implications.
“We are not talking about an election result,” he said, “but about an earthquake that has been unleashed by this election in Bavaria.”
But he didn’t mention that his party’s own performance of just over 18 percent was also its worst-ever showing in the prosperous state of laptops and lederhosen.
Analysts said that voters punished the CSU for clinging to traditional social values and Catholic Church doctrine in a Europe that has become increasingly secular.
It did not help that Beckstein and party Chairman Erwin Huber lacked the charisma of Stoiber and failed to galvanize voters to support a fresh vision.
Recent state elections have seen coalitions between the CDU and Greens in Hamburg, and the SPD eyeing an alliance with the Greens and the Left in Hesse, where there is a minority CDU caretaker government.
The defeated SPD candidate in Bavaria, Franz Maget, even suggested a four-party coalition to unseat the CSU, arguing that the ruling party had morally lost the right to govern.
While the Greens said they would support such a move, the FDP said it was not interested in “a gaudy coalition of anarchists.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7533132.stm
?
Page last updated at 13:30 GMT, Wednesday, 30 July 2008 14:30 UK
?
German court rejects smoking bans
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Rules for smokers vary across Germany’s 16 states
Germany’s top court has ruled against smoking bans in small bars and clubs.
The Federal Constitutional Court upheld complaints against the bans in the city-state of Berlin and Baden-Wuerttemberg, in south-west Germany.
The two states are among 12 that introduced such bans at the start of the year. The court says they must now review their anti-smoking laws.
Smoking will now be allowed in one-room bars and clubs smaller than 75 sq m (807 sq ft), where no food is served.
The court gave Berlin and Baden-Wuerttemberg until the end of 2009 to draft new anti-smoking legislation.
Presiding judge Hans-Juergen Papier made it clear that German states could introduce blanket smoking bans in all public spaces if they so wished.
The complaint was brought by the owners of two small bars in Tuebingen and Berlin, who argued that the smoking ban was harming their business. They also said that, unlike larger premises, they had no space to create a separate smoking room.
The judge’s ruling is seen as setting a legal precedent for Germany because most of the country’s states have similar anti-smoking laws.
Bavaria has a total ban on smoking in bars and beer tents. In Saarland, smoking is allowed in small bars and larger ones that provide a separate smoking room.
The other states ban smoking in one-room bars but allow it in establishments that provide a separate smoking room.
Germany has a nationwide ban on smoking in government buildings.
?
Rules for smokers vary across Germany’s 16 states
Germany’s top court has ruled against smoking bans in small bars and clubs.
The Federal Constitutional Court upheld complaints against the bans in the city-state of Berlin and Baden-Wuerttemberg, in south-west Germany.
The two states are among 12 that introduced such bans at the start of the year. The court says they must now review their anti-smoking laws.
Smoking will now be allowed in one-room bars and clubs smaller than 75 sq m (807 sq ft), where no food is served.
The court gave Berlin and Baden-Wuerttemberg until the end of 2009 to draft new anti-smoking legislation.
Presiding judge Hans-Juergen Papier made it clear that German states could introduce blanket smoking bans in all public spaces if they so wished.
The complaint was brought by the owners of two small bars in Tuebingen and Berlin, who argued that the smoking ban was harming their business. They also said that, unlike larger premises, they had no space to create a separate smoking room.
The judge’s ruling is seen as setting a legal precedent for Germany because most of the country’s states have similar anti-smoking laws.
Bavaria has a total ban on smoking in bars and beer tents. In Saarland, smoking is allowed in small bars and larger ones that provide a separate smoking room.
The other states ban smoking in one-room bars but allow it in establishments that provide a separate smoking room.
Germany has a nationwide ban on smoking in government buildings.
http://www.thepublican.com/story.asp?sectioncode=16&storycode;=60681&c;=3
http://www.thepublican.com/story.asp?storycode=60652
Pete Robinson: Smoking ban victory for German publicans
1 August, 2008
ASH must still be laughing into their Doctor Scholl sandals…
No doubt you will already have read about this news so I won’t dwell on the details. Nor will I gloat and beat my chest proclaiming with a roar to the smoking-ban-holocaust-deniers that my observations were correct all along.
Suffice to say German publicans have won a major battle in Germany’s highest court that effectively overturns their smoking ban until 2010 – when a small minority of professional antis will have another stab at the issue.
Again I predict they will fail as surely as Gordon Brown in a popularity contest.
But the big question is why can’t we achieve something similar here in Blighty, when all we are asking for is a small piece of the fairness and compromise shown in almost every other European country?
The answer is hiding in this line from The Publican’s news report of Germany’s victory: “The situation differs to that in the UK where a total smoking ban covers all public places, meaning a level playing field for all businesses.”
When our Trade leaders SHOULD have been fighting against the ban they fought instead for the ‘level playing field’ – i.e. the blanket ban. With greedy eyes fixated on bogus figures predicting a surge of new business they gambled everything on the ‘new opportunity’ and lobbied hard for no exemptions whatsoever, e.g. for members clubs.
In so doing they signed their own death warrant. ASH must still be laughing into their Doctor Scholl sandals.
The result isn’t a level playing field at all. It’s HALF a field, and shrinking fast. The rest has been handed over on a plate to the supermarkets and cut-priced off-trade. It’s been freely awarded to the takeaway industry, like Domino Pizzas who have seen profits surge upwards by 33% since the smoking ban.
What’s more the door has now been left open for swathes of new anti-pub legislation and taxation coming from a Government under pressure from the temperance lobby. And all with barely a whisper of opposition from an Industry that’s already proved itself to be a complete pushover.
The Trade backed the wrong horse and committed commercial suicide on a catastrophic scale, with the worst yet to be seen. If you think it’s hurting now you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Far from admitting their monumental cock-up and changing course these wise men-in-suits steer ever closer to the beconning rocks while their share prices tumble into the basement. They insist it’s all YOUR fault, for not mortgaging your wife and kids to convert your pubs into trendy coffee bars bedecked in teak and chrome.
It’s not just our Industry leaders either. We are all to blame – for our appalling apathy and blind faith in doing as we’re bloody well told. We naively believed New Labour’s 2005 manifesto pledges and never saw the blanket ban being slipped in under the radar.
Even during the short window of opportunity for action most of the Trade fell for the calm reassurances that the ban would not affect trade beyond the first four months. We meekly surrendered to the antis without a shot being fired.
Contrast that with Germany, where a series of marches saw over 1,000 publicans at a time marching through major cities. Almost every bar raised petitions signed wholesale by their eager customers. Huge numbers put up a standard wall sign outside declaring – “Rauchen in dieser Kneipe” – This is a smoking pub!
German trade bodies argued the usual dubious statistics and produced their own which stood up to scrutiny. Through the German media politicians were forced to see their ban was highly unpopular and likely to lose them votes.
Yet here we are still doing nothing but hide in our cellars wearing a tin hat, in the forlorn hope that somebody, somewhere will sound the all-clear and things will return to normal.
They won’t. I tried to warn from the beginning smokers will NEVER accept the ban. They aren’t simply away on a temporary sulk.
They’ve moved on to a new and cheaper way of socialising that better fits their needs.
Just read the papers, turn on the TV, and look at the message we are sending out. The smoking ban is a huge success warmly embraced throughout the Trade. Two thirds of Licensees think the smoking ban is the best thing since sliced bread and the same number would never overturn it even if they had the power.
Sure, pubs are closing but that’s just the credit crunch, innit?
Nothing to do with the smoking ban. Anyway loads of pubs are making a mint now ’cause with all that clean air they attract a better class of customer. We don’t want those horrible smokers back, no way.
Have we all gone mad? Allowing ASH to dominate press releases leads to smoking customers believing they are no longer welcome in pubs – and they are blaming you! You might just as well hang a sign above your door saying just that unless you help counter that propaganda.
The Trade has a day of reckoning to come when the carnage of our shrinking pub stock becomes too great to bear. At that time we will be forced to confront the truth head on, although it may well be too late.
Meantime I watch in despair as our Industry busily stokes it’s own funeral pyre.
?Comment on this story
?
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,539902,00.html
/06/2008
UP IN SMOKE
Bavarian Politicans Want to Relax Smoking Ban
The leaders of Bavaria’s ruling party, the Christian Social U nion, want to relax the state’s smoking ban — and very quickly. Many of the party’s politicians blame the ban for the CSU’s poor showing in recent local elections.
?
http://www.thepublican.com/story.asp?storycode=60652
Pete Robinson: Smoking ban victory for German publicans
1 August, 2008
ASH must still be laughing into their Doctor Scholl sandals…
No doubt you will already have read about this news so I won’t dwell on the details. Nor will I gloat and beat my chest proclaiming with a roar to the smoking-ban-holocaust-deniers that my observations were correct all along.
Suffice to say German publicans have won a major battle in Germany’s highest court that effectively overturns their smoking ban until 2010 – when a small minority of professional antis will have another stab at the issue.
Again I predict they will fail as surely as Gordon Brown in a popularity contest.
But the big question is why can’t we achieve something similar here in Blighty, when all we are asking for is a small piece of the fairness and compromise shown in almost every other European country?
The answer is hiding in this line from The Publican’s news report of Germany’s victory: “The situation differs to that in the UK where a total smoking ban covers all public places, meaning a level playing field for all businesses.”
When our Trade leaders SHOULD have been fighting against the ban they fought instead for the ‘level playing field’ – i.e. the blanket ban. With greedy eyes fixated on bogus figures predicting a surge of new business they gambled everything on the ‘new opportunity’ and lobbied hard for no exemptions whatsoever, e.g. for members clubs.
In so doing they signed their own death warrant. ASH must still be laughing into their Doctor Scholl sandals.
The result isn’t a level playing field at all. It’s HALF a field, and shrinking fast. The rest has been handed over on a plate to the supermarkets and cut-priced off-trade. It’s been freely awarded to the takeaway industry, like Domino Pizzas who have seen profits surge upwards by 33% since the smoking ban.
What’s more the door has now been left open for swathes of new anti-pub legislation and taxation coming from a Government under pressure from the temperance lobby. And all with barely a whisper of opposition from an Industry that’s already proved itself to be a complete pushover.
The Trade backed the wrong horse and committed commercial suicide on a catastrophic scale, with the worst yet to be seen. If you think it’s hurting now you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Far from admitting their monumental cock-up and changing course these wise men-in-suits steer ever closer to the beconning rocks while their share prices tumble into the basement. They insist it’s all YOUR fault, for not mortgaging your wife and kids to convert your pubs into trendy coffee bars bedecked in teak and chrome.
It’s not just our Industry leaders either. We are all to blame – for our appalling apathy and blind faith in doing as we’re bloody well told. We naively believed New Labour’s 2005 manifesto pledges and never saw the blanket ban being slipped in under the radar.
Even during the short window of opportunity for action most of the Trade fell for the calm reassurances that the ban would not affect trade beyond the first four months. We meekly surrendered to the antis without a shot being fired.
Contrast that with Germany, where a series of marches saw over 1,000 publicans at a time marching through major cities. Almost every bar raised petitions signed wholesale by their eager customers. Huge numbers put up a standard wall sign outside declaring – “Rauchen in dieser Kneipe” – This is a smoking pub!
German trade bodies argued the usual dubious statistics and produced their own which stood up to scrutiny. Through the German media politicians were forced to see their ban was highly unpopular and likely to lose them votes.
Yet here we are still doing nothing but hide in our cellars wearing a tin hat, in the forlorn hope that somebody, somewhere will sound the all-clear and things will return to normal.
They won’t. I tried to warn from the beginning smokers will NEVER accept the ban. They aren’t simply away on a temporary sulk.
They’ve moved on to a new and cheaper way of socialising that better fits their needs.
Just read the papers, turn on the TV, and look at the message we are sending out. The smoking ban is a huge success warmly embraced throughout the Trade. Two thirds of Licensees think the smoking ban is the best thing since sliced bread and the same number would never overturn it even if they had the power.
Sure, pubs are closing but that’s just the credit crunch, innit?
Nothing to do with the smoking ban. Anyway loads of pubs are making a mint now ’cause with all that clean air they attract a better class of customer. We don’t want those horrible smokers back, no way.
Have we all gone mad? Allowing ASH to dominate press releases leads to smoking customers believing they are no longer welcome in pubs – and they are blaming you! You might just as well hang a sign above your door saying just that unless you help counter that propaganda.
The Trade has a day of reckoning to come when the carnage of our shrinking pub stock becomes too great to bear. At that time we will be forced to confront the truth head on, although it may well be too late.
Meantime I watch in despair as our Industry busily stokes it’s own funeral pyre.
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http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,539902,00.html
/06/2008
UP IN SMOKE
Bavarian Politicans Want to Relax Smoking Ban
The leaders of Bavaria’s ruling party, the Christian Social U nion, want to relax the state’s smoking ban — and very quickly. Many of the party’s politicians blame the ban for the CSU’s poor showing in recent local elections.
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Getty Images
Smoking is banned inside this Munich beer hall — but for how long?
The leaders of the Christian Social U nion, the conservative Bavarian sister party to Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic U nion, are planning to relax Bavaria’s smoking ban — just two months after it was introduced.
The state’s ruling party wants to introduce the relaxation next week, granting special exemptions to beer tents and small pubs. The change in regulation is aimed in particular at large tents, as found in Munich’s famous Oktoberfest.
Many of the party’s top politicians blamed the state’s strict smoking ban on their party’s poor showing in recent local elections. The CSU suffered big defeats in Munich and Nuremberg in Sunday’s polls, where center-left Social Democratic Party mayors were re-elected with bigger marigins. A leading CSU politician, who prefered to remain anonymous, told the S?ddeutsche Zeitung on Monday that many of the party’s supporters had abstained from voting because of the ban.
The smoking ban, which was introduced in Bavaria on Jan. 1, is the strictest in Germany, forbidding people from lighting up in restaurants, pubs and even beer tents — meaning that the 2008 Oktoberfest will be smoke-free. Bavaria was one of eight German states to ban smoking in public places from the start of this year.
The calls for a relaxation of curbs in Bavaria were criticized by Maria Eichhorn, a CSU politician who speaks on drug isssues in the Bundestag, the German parliament. She told the German news agency DPA on Wednesday: “A relaxation of the smoking ban in Bavaria would be fatal for public health protection and for the public’s trust in politicians.”
maw/dpa
http://ibtimes.com/articles/20080212/german-state-relaxes-smoking-ban.htm
German State Relaxes Smoking Ban
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By AP
12 February 2008 @ 12:07 pm EST
Next Politics & Policy Article
BERLIN – Owners of one-room, corner pubs in a southwestern German state won a partial victory against a new anti-smoking law on Tuesday, when a court ruled their customers are allowed to puff away for now.
The constitutional court in Koblenz, in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, said 80 percent of some small pubs’ clientele are smokers, and to force one-room establishments to ban smoking entirely would endanger their existence.
The provisional ruling was made before the new law, which requires establishments to provide customers with a no-smoking room and takes effect on Friday, so the pubs can continue to operate as normal while the court deliberates further over the case. A group of five small pub owners brought the case to court.
The court ordered the pubs to clearly post signs indicating that they are smoking establishments.
While the German government was able to push-through a ban on smoking in German trains, other public transport and federal buildings, which took effect in September, it has been up to the states to decide about the right to smoke in bars and restaurants.
At least half of Germany’s 16 states have introduced or plan to introduce restrictions which largely have fallen short of near-total bans on smoking in enclosed areas taking hold elsewhere in Europe.
The strictest is in the southern state of Bavaria, where special rooms for smokers are not allowed. Smoking is also banned in beer tents including those at the Oktoberfest, Munich’s annual celebration of the national brew.
Next Article: Court Upholds Isley’s Tax Sentence
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German state relaxes smoking ban for 1-room, corner pubs
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Published: February 12, 2008
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BERLIN: Owners of one-room, corner pubs in a southwestern German state won a partial victory against a new anti-smoking law on Tuesday, when a court ruled their customers are allowed to puff away — for now.
The constitutional court in Koblenz, in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, said 80 percent of some small pubs’ clientele are smokers, and to force one-room establishments to ban smoking entirely would endanger their existence.
The provisional ruling was made before the new law, which requires establishments to provide customers with a no-smoking room and takes effect on Friday, so the pubs can continue to operate as normal while the court deliberates further over the case. A group of five small pub owners brought the case to court.
The court ordered the pubs to clearly post signs indicating that they are smoking establishments.
While the German government was able to push-through a ban on smoking in German trains, other public transport and federal buildings, which took effect in September, it has been up to the states to decide about the right to smoke in bars and restaurants.
Today in Europe
?
3 oil countries face a reckoning
?
86 accused in coup plot go on trial in Turkey
?
Britain’s boom is over and not everybody minds
?
At least half of Germany’s 16 states have introduced or plan to introduce restrictions — which largely have fallen short of near-total bans on smoking in enclosed areas taking hold elsewhere in Europe.
The strictest is in the southern state of Bavaria, where special rooms for smokers are not allowed. Smoking is also banned in beer tents — including those at the Oktoberfest, Munich’s annual celebration of the national brew.
Smoking is banned inside this Munich beer hall — but for how long?
The leaders of the Christian Social U nion, the conservative Bavarian sister party to Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic U nion, are planning to relax Bavaria’s smoking ban — just two months after it was introduced.
The state’s ruling party wants to introduce the relaxation next week, granting special exemptions to beer tents and small pubs. The change in regulation is aimed in particular at large tents, as found in Munich’s famous Oktoberfest.
Many of the party’s top politicians blamed the state’s strict smoking ban on their party’s poor showing in recent local elections. The CSU suffered big defeats in Munich and Nuremberg in Sunday’s polls, where center-left Social Democratic Party mayors were re-elected with bigger marigins. A leading CSU politician, who prefered to remain anonymous, told the S?ddeutsche Zeitung on Monday that many of the party’s supporters had abstained from voting because of the ban.
The smoking ban, which was introduced in Bavaria on Jan. 1, is the strictest in Germany, forbidding people from lighting up in restaurants, pubs and even beer tents — meaning that the 2008 Oktoberfest will be smoke-free. Bavaria was one of eight German states to ban smoking in public places from the start of this year.
The calls for a relaxation of curbs in Bavaria were criticized by Maria Eichhorn, a CSU politician who speaks on drug isssues in the Bundestag, the German parliament. She told the German news agency DPA on Wednesday: “A relaxation of the smoking ban in Bavaria would be fatal for public health protection and for the public’s trust in politicians.”
maw/dpa
http://ibtimes.com/articles/20080212/german-state-relaxes-smoking-ban.htm
German State Relaxes Smoking Ban
?
?
By AP
12 February 2008 @ 12:07 pm EST
Next Politics & Policy Article
BERLIN – Owners of one-room, corner pubs in a southwestern German state won a partial victory against a new anti-smoking law on Tuesday, when a court ruled their customers are allowed to puff away for now.
The constitutional court in Koblenz, in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, said 80 percent of some small pubs’ clientele are smokers, and to force one-room establishments to ban smoking entirely would endanger their existence.
The provisional ruling was made before the new law, which requires establishments to provide customers with a no-smoking room and takes effect on Friday, so the pubs can continue to operate as normal while the court deliberates further over the case. A group of five small pub owners brought the case to court.
The court ordered the pubs to clearly post signs indicating that they are smoking establishments.
While the German government was able to push-through a ban on smoking in German trains, other public transport and federal buildings, which took effect in September, it has been up to the states to decide about the right to smoke in bars and restaurants.
At least half of Germany’s 16 states have introduced or plan to introduce restrictions which largely have fallen short of near-total bans on smoking in enclosed areas taking hold elsewhere in Europe.
The strictest is in the southern state of Bavaria, where special rooms for smokers are not allowed. Smoking is also banned in beer tents including those at the Oktoberfest, Munich’s annual celebration of the national brew.
Next Article: Court Upholds Isley’s Tax Sentence
?
German state relaxes smoking ban for 1-room, corner pubs
?
Published: February 12, 2008
?
?
?
BERLIN: Owners of one-room, corner pubs in a southwestern German state won a partial victory against a new anti-smoking law on Tuesday, when a court ruled their customers are allowed to puff away — for now.
The constitutional court in Koblenz, in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, said 80 percent of some small pubs’ clientele are smokers, and to force one-room establishments to ban smoking entirely would endanger their existence.
The provisional ruling was made before the new law, which requires establishments to provide customers with a no-smoking room and takes effect on Friday, so the pubs can continue to operate as normal while the court deliberates further over the case. A group of five small pub owners brought the case to court.
The court ordered the pubs to clearly post signs indicating that they are smoking establishments.
While the German government was able to push-through a ban on smoking in German trains, other public transport and federal buildings, which took effect in September, it has been up to the states to decide about the right to smoke in bars and restaurants.
Today in Europe
?
3 oil countries face a reckoning
?
86 accused in coup plot go on trial in Turkey
?
Britain’s boom is over and not everybody minds
?
At least half of Germany’s 16 states have introduced or plan to introduce restrictions — which largely have fallen short of near-total bans on smoking in enclosed areas taking hold elsewhere in Europe.
The strictest is in the southern state of Bavaria, where special rooms for smokers are not allowed. Smoking is also banned in beer tents — including those at the Oktoberfest, Munich’s annual celebration of the national brew.
‘Nazi’ claim as Germans rebel over smoking ban
Outrage greets change to the law – and drinkers forced to cross the border
Kate Connolly in Berlin
January 20, 2008
January 20, 2008
As he peers through his swollen eyes and shows his bruises to a group of journalists, Gerhard Gr?nberg is bemused at the way in which he has secured his few minutes of fame. The waiter, 57, was the first reported victim of ‘bar rage’ in Germany after smoking bans were introduced in bars and restaurants across the country on 1 January.
He explains how he politely ushered a smoker outside the Vienna Bar in which he works in southern Berlin, pointing out to him the couch, red blanket and gas heater set up for smokers. ‘But the man said I was taking away his rights, and then he threw the punch,’ he recalls.
The new law has triggered a rebellion and many people have taken drastic and imaginative measures so they can continue smoking.
One campaigner went as far as to issue a T-shirt bearing a yellow star of David along with the word ‘smoker’, comparing the ‘persecution’ of smokers to that of Jews under the Nazis. The outrage of Jewish groups led to its withdrawal.
Refusing to face reality, some pub and club owners have even tried to turn their establishments into member-owning smoking clubs, like Hamburg’s Association for the Preservation of Smoke Culture and Advancement of Tolerance.
The owner of the Mouse Trap pub in Schleswig-Holstein has lodged an application to turn it into a church. ‘I consider the burning of tobacco to be a religious practice,’ said Dirk Bruckner, who already boasts around 400 followers.
While smoking in bars is technically already illegal, fines of between €5 and €100 for those who continue to light up will not be implemented until July, when orderlies will be sent to inspect establishments. As a result, many Berliners in particular – considered to have one of the most pronounced counter-cultures of any city in Europe and therefore used to putting up a fight – are holding out until then. So where you can smoke and where you cannot could hardly be more confusing.
‘We’re not really thinking about it until the summer,’ said the manager of Diskothek 103 in the traditional anarchists’ heartland, Kreuzberg. ‘Then we might build a separate smokers’ lounge.’
Indeed, another quirk in the law, allowing smokers into establishments with separate rooms, has led to an explosion of creative solutions, from no-smoker tunnels now being mass-produced out of plaster cast to mobile smoker rooms, complete with DJ and sofas, which are touring the city picking up disgruntled smokers.
The reason for Germans’ refusal to take lying down a law that has now become the norm even in European nations that have traditionally taken pride in their subversiveness – such as Italy, Ireland and Scotland – is repeatedly put down to German history.
Campaigners for smokers’ rights have been quick to draw on the comparison between the recent clampdown and the little-known nationwide tobacco ban introduced by the Nazis in 1941 as part of their quest for bodily and racial purity.
While few Germans would dare to point it out publicly, for fear of appearing to praise the Nazi era, some of the most advanced research into the links between tobacco consumption and lung cancer was carried out under the Nazis.
Under the supervision of the Institute for Tobacco Hazards Research, the ban was imposed in every public building and public space, including air-raid shelters, with Hitler even personally intervening in 1944 to ensure it was extended to trains and buses in order to protect young female conductors. It was even pointed out that Hitler, Mussolini and Franco were all non-smokers, while the ‘evil enemies’ – Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin – all enjoyed a tobacco fix.
‘Some feel a deep necessity nowadays to distance themselves from the Nazi position – according to which cigarettes were damaging to the idea of the “ideal German Aryan” – and to stand up in favour of smokers’ rights because that equates to standing up for democracy and the freedom of expression,’ says Bernd Schmidt, 38, a member of a newly founded Berlin smoking club. ‘But the fact is, for many, they just like their cigarettes too much.’
The renowned British musician Joe Jackson, a defender of smokers’ rights who has recently moved from New York to Kreuzberg, says the ban goes against the city’s famously rebellious and relaxed nature. ‘It is a catastrophic development for Berlin, much worse than for other cities, because this city was always a symbol of freedom and tolerance… It has bars that never close, brothels, clubs in which people have sex… everything is allowed, but smoking is forbidden? It makes no sense,’ he told the German newspaper TAZ
But a handful of the one third-plus of Germans who smoke have taken to leaving the country. Bars on the Polish side of the border are full of Germans coming to enjoy their customary cigarette. In the London Pub in Slubice, across the river from Frankfurt an der Oder, a group of middle-aged Germans are swigging and puffing to their hearts’ content. ‘It’s just like in the old days,’ says Dieter Neubauer, who strolled over the border after work.
German Don Quixotes Tilt against Smoking Ban
January 11, 2008
By Merlind Theile in Hamburg
By Merlind Theile in Hamburg
Germany this year finally got around to banning smoking. But a patchwork of state laws has given rise to many different manifestations of a new species: the smoking rebel.
As long as Helmut Meinecke runs this place, the ashtrays will stay on the tables. “Zur lustigen Mamma” — “The Happy Mother” — is the name of his corner bar in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg, a local joint the size of a living room, with a wooden bar, a jukebox and a slot machine.
Meinecke is a drinking man’s raconteur, straight out of German lore — the sort of guy you find all over the country, shrouded in cigarette smoke. “Eighty percent of my guests smoke,” says Meinecke, 61, and on this evening in January they still do, although a smoking ban in Hamburg went into effect on the 1st.
Meinecke, wearing a gray turtleneck, with white hair and a red face, pours a beer behind the bar and talks himself into a rage. “I’m so mad I can’t stand it,” he says. “If my guests can’t smoke I’ll have to close the place down.” So before he retires on a state pension — after 42 years of work — he’d rather let Werner and Edith and the rest of his guests light up. Never mind the law, Meinecke says. He’ll keep doing his thing “until they arrest me.”
He won’t wind up in jail. But since the start of the year rebels like him have to think about fines of up to €1,000 ($1,400) and a possible business-license revocation. Three states had bans before Jan. 1, and eight more outlawed smoking in public buildings, restaurants and bars as of New Year’s — and a majority of smokers have complied. The state of Saxony will hop on the wagon this Feb. 1. Saarland and Rhineland-Palatinate join the party two weeks later.
Like so many laws in federal Germany, regulations against smoking aren’t orchestrated from above, so the fines and exceptions and transitional periods are different in every state. But one thing all the bans have in common is that owners like Meinecke, who can’t set up non-smoking rooms in their little corner bars, will lose out.
Don Quixotes like him nationwide have been tilting against the bans. Not everyone goes in for civil disobedience: One weapon of choice has been the petition. But to force a referendum, a knight-errant generally has to collect tens of thousands of signatures. Of course he can also resort to the court system, and legal complaints on constitutional grounds have been mounted so far by proprietors in Bavaria, Hesse and Baden-W?rttemberg.
Another method beloved by Germans is forming a club. The owner of a bar in Hamburg called Parallelwelt (“Parallel World”) has turned her place of business into a “smokers’ association.” Anyone who becomes a member — for €6 — can come in as usual and keep smoking.
For Guests and Proprietors
The hour of clever solutions may have dawned for smokers and people who want to serve them. The future for rowdy tobacco fans in Germany may be outdoor winter gardens, or even glassed-in smoking rooms. For the guests of places like “Zur lustigen Mamma” in Hamburg, though, such solutions are nonsense. “This whole smoking ban thing is just paternalism,” said Daniela Ilian, 59, who was drinking a beer in Meinecke’s bar only because she could light up, too. “If it was really about health they would just outlaw cigarettes. But then the finance minister wouldn’t get his cut.”
The state has hauled in more than €110 billion ($162.5 billion) in tobacco taxes since 1999. A full third of all adults in Germany still smoke, and around 140,000 per year die as a direct consequence of the habit. A government report on drugs and addiction also attributes the deaths of 3,300 non-smokers per year to the consequences of “passive smoking.”
In Ireland, since the start of a smoking ban in 2004, researchers say the number of deaths by heart attack has fallen by around 11 percent. In Italy, where a smoking ban came into effect in 2005, heart attack deaths in the Piedmont region have also dropped by 11 percent among people under 60. And they dropped by a staggering 27 percent in the American county of Pueblo, Colorado in the year 2006 after a ban.
Meinecke knows the dangers of smoking; he quit himself after a heart attack 18 years ago. But health is just a side issue for him. The main principle is freedom.
He has a few people speaking for him in German politics. Hinnerk Fock, a local leader of the free-market FDP (Free Democrats) running for office in Hamburg, has recently hung the first poster of his anti-smoking-ban campaign in “Zur lustigen Mamma.” The slogan “Free Choice for Guests and Proprietors” is now visible for everyone to read on Meinecke’s brick wall.
Free Democrats in Hesse and Bavaria have also made a campaign issue out of the smoking ban, and in Bavaria the law is especially strict — it will stamp out smoking even in Oktoberfest beer tents. The Free Democrats hope the issue will put their share of the vote over a five percent hurdle for the legislature, which would allow the FDP to (finally) re-enter Bavarian politics.
But there is one loophole for unrepentant tobacco-hounds in Bavaria already: a prostitute’s place of business is still a free-for-all zone — for guests as well as proprietors — who want to light up.
