What happened
How a reassurance turned, overnight, into a market ban
A timeline of publicly verifiable facts: from the introduction of the provision in 2022, through thirteen months of explicit 'non-blocking' reassurance, to the service letter of June 2026 that removes about half of the bestsellers from the market within six months - while every comparable measure was given a longer run-up.
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Base Royal Decree on e-cigarettes
The Royal Decree on the manufacture and placing on the market of electronic cigarettes (numac 2016024250) enters into force. At that point it contains no ban on 'additives that facilitate the inhalation or absorption of nicotine'.
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The provision is inserted
The Royal Decree of 07/11/2022 (numac 2022034085, Belgian Official Gazette 11/01/2023) amends the base Royal Decree and inserts into art. 4 §4 the ban on additives that facilitate inhalation/absorption. The draft had been notified to the EU on 06/07/2021 (TRIS file 2021/0427/B). For tobacco products a similar provision had existed since the Royal Decree of 05/02/2016 (art. 5 §3 4°).
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FPS Public Health's promises
At its information session and in the accompanying FAQ, FPS Public Health promises: a later, specific communication with a sample list of ingredients, that the sector would be informed in good time, and that a specific transition period would be provided for.
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Expressly 'non-blocking'
FPS Public Health introduces notification code E25/EE.25: 'additives that facilitate the inhalation/absorption of nicotine are prohibited; correct your notification - for now a non-blocking decision', expressly because the subject 'is still being discussed at European level', with the promise of 'concrete answers soon'. Products carrying this comment continue to be accepted as compliant.
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Thirteen months accepted as compliant
Up to and including this date, the non-blocking comment appears word for word on every signed notification confirmation. For thirteen months, then, the products concerned were lawfully accepted on the market.
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The flavour ban via the formal route
The Council of Ministers approves the draft Royal Decree and Ministerial Decree for the flavour ban. It restricts e-liquids (with and without nicotine) to tobacco flavour or no flavour via a positive list, enters into force on 01/09/2028 and allows existing stock to be sold until then - a run-up of around twenty-seven months via the formal, EU-notified procedure.
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The service letter is signed
Department head Carl Berthot signs the letter with ref. 20260608/L534/RQX. It qualifies all TRPM8 activators as additives that facilitate inhalation/absorption under art. 4 §4 of the Royal Decree of 28/10/2016 - not a Royal or Ministerial Decree, but a service letter.
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Communication to the sector
The letter is communicated to the sector. From 01/01/2027 the comment becomes blocking: the products concerned - all e-liquids, with or without nicotine - go onto the negative list, may no longer be placed on the market and can be seized. Barely six months' run-up, with no transition or sell-off.
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The ban becomes blocking
An estimated half of all products on the positive list - precisely the bestsellers - disappear from the legal market with no sell-off arrangement. The flavour ban, which affects the same products, only enters into force on 01/09/2028. Twenty months' difference for exactly the same products.
An avoidable incoherence
The facts are not in dispute: the same products, two deadlines twenty months apart, the heaviest measure with the shortest run-up and the lightest legal instrument. FPS Public Health knows the impact down to the euro via EUCEG and the annual sales reporting. Reducing this to a single deadline resolves it without touching the policy objective.