European Shisha Community Alliance
ESCA
The European Shisha Community Alliance (ESCA) aims to represent the thousands of small businesses that run lounges, retail outlets and shisha manufacturers that are proud to sell products that have a unique historic and cultural link to their customers.
ID: 876337940850-36
Lobbying Activity
Response to Revised recommendation on smoke-free environments
20 Jul 2022
The European Shisha Community Alliance (ESCA) is a trade association that aims to represent the interests of over 25,000 micro and small businesses that employ over 60,000 people in the water pipe (also known as shisha or hookah) sector in Europe.
Shisha is a niche and cultural product that is prepared in venues dedicated to serving adults who specifically seek out shisha lounges and cafés to enjoy shisha. Any restriction on a shisha business’ ability to serve shisha outdoors or in dedicated smoking areas or a restriction on a shisha consumers ability to consume shisha outdoors/in a dedicated smoking area would result in the destruction of thousands of businesses across the EU. Therefore, we urge the Commission and the Member States to exempt shisha lounges and cafés from their recommendations for further restrictions.
Please find attached our detailed response.
Read full responseResponse to Tobacco taxation – revision of EU rules
5 Jan 2021
The European Shisha Community Alliance (ESCA) welcomes the opportunity offered by the European Commission to provide input to the inception impact assessment on the revision of Directive 2011/64/EU on the structure and rates of excise duty applied to manufactured tobacco.
ESCA is a newly established and growing organisation that aims to represent the thousands of venues, manufacturers and retailers that are involved in the water-pipe sector in Europe. Our concern is that water-pipe, known commonly as shisha, has traditionally been a poorly understood category by regulators largely because it had not had any representation in the policy making processes. This has led to its regulation and taxation alongside other categories with which it has little similarity.
The key points that we believe should be taken account of for the impact assessment:
1. Shisha is very different from other tobacco and vaping products. Its use is characteristically (and uniquely) social, occasional (infrequent), cumbersome and time consuming. It is not a quick fix nicotine hit but a cultural and social experience suitable for adults only. It has cultural roots in the Middle East, India and North Africa and therefore is more prevalent in European countries with higher concentrations of diaspora from those regions.
2. It is by definition a flavoured product with a comparatively low level of tobacco in a mixture which is heated rather than burned to produce a vapour that is 60% water.
3. It supports a large and diverse value chain in Europe of manufacturers, flavour suppliers, wholesalers, retailers and many thousands of shisha serving hospitality venues.
4. High tax rates and high tax differentials between countries, coupled with low levels of enforcement prioritisation have resulted in alarmingly high levels of tax avoidance thus posing an existential threat to the legal, duty paid sector. It is the only tobacco product where illicit operators have gained a higher market share in Europe than legal businesses. This jeopardises not only legitimate businesses but also consumers and of course, government revenues.
We believe that a mixture of tax reform that takes account of the nature and characteristics of shisha and its consumption patterns coupled with more enforcement attention and industry cooperation will provide the right mix of policy tools to improve the situation.
Please find attached our detailed submission for your consideration.
Read full response