Fighting Illicit Trade

Relevant information from the EU and WHO

• The EU decided that EU-wide rules were necessary based on the significant cross border trade of tobacco products and the risk of diverging national legislation

  • European Commission tobacco traceability strategy

  • EU Implementing Regulation 2018/574

  • Impact Assessment on the EU Implementing Regulation 2018/574

  • EU minutes of relevant meetings

• The WHO (World Health Organization) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products were developed in response to the growing illicit trade in tobacco products, often across borders, which poses a serious threat to public health

  • Access the WHO Protocol

  • Parties to the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products

  • Learn more about GS1 Public Policy

GS1 FIT AIDC Standards (ID and barcode)

This application standard provides a normative GS1 response to a specific regulatory requirement. It covers identification and marking of various entities per the European Commission Implementing Regulation on technical standards for the establishment and operation of a traceability system for tobacco products. If other regulatory authorities adopt the EC approach, this application standard is intended to support their efforts and enable global interoperability.

GS1 Master Data Standards for economic operator, facility, machine, and product (unit pack) identifier requests

The purpose of this document is to create standard messages used for the creation and management of identifier codes for Economic Operators, Facilities, Machines and Unit Level Items. In addition, there is messaging for registry responses and for message recall.  It is assumed in this documentation that the messages for creating managing Economic Operators, Facilities and Machines will be APIs that will interact with a registry.  The information sent to the registry and received from the registry will be in the JSON format.

GS1 EPCIS Application Standard

This application standard explains how to implement the GS1 EPCIS standard to combat illicit trade, particularly in the context of EU 2018/574. This application standard leverages GS1’s existing EPCIS and CBV standards, and introduces new, FIT-specific GS1 normative content.

GS1 EPCIS and CBV (Core Business Vocabulary) Standards

GS1 Tag Data Standard

GS1's EPC Tag Data Standard (TDS) defines the Electronic Product Code (EPC), including its correspondence to GS1 keys and other existing codes. TDS also specifies data that is carried on Gen 2 RFID tags, including the EPC, User Memory data, control information, and tag manufacture information.

GS1 Order EDI Message

The Order message provides the ability for a buyer to order specified quantities of goods and services from a seller for a single shipment to or from a single location.

GS1 EDI Invoice Message

The Invoice message is sent by the supplier to the customer claiming payment for goods or services supplied under conditions agreed by the seller and the buyer.

GS1 Settlement (Pay) EDI Message

The goal of the Settlement message is to send payment instruction and / or remittance information.

Relevant information from the EU and WHO

• The EU decided that EU-wide rules were necessary based on the significant cross border trade of tobacco products and the risk of diverging national legislation

  • European Commission tobacco traceability strategy

  • EU Implementing Regulation 2018/574

  • Impact Assessment on the EU Implementing Regulation 2018/574

  • EU minutes of relevant meetings

• The WHO (World Health Organization) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products were developed in response to the growing illicit trade in tobacco products, often across borders, which poses a serious threat to public health

  • Access the WHO Protocol

  • Parties to the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products

  • Learn more about GS1 Public Policy

• ID Issuer Implementation Guide

• Economic Operator Onboarding Guide

• Data Capture Specifications for EU 2018/574 Unique Identifiers

• GS1 overview of EU 2018/574 data capture requirements

• GS1 Specifications for aggregate level UIs generated directly by economic operators can be found within Secondary Repository (Dentsu) Clarifications on Reporting Unique Identifiers, Section 1.2.2.

• The EU Secondary Repository operated by Dentsu now includes specifications inclusive of GS1 EPCIS and EDI XML standards as well as GS1’s algorithm/flat-file specifications. Version 1.3 of Dentsu’s technical specifications and Common Data Dictionary incorporate these important changes. Today, GS1 Data Sharing standards are the only open, international standards for data exchange supported by the EU Secondary Repository. This offers GS1 members the opportunity to use their existing XML messages for event and transactional data to meet EU 2018/574 regulatory requirements.

• GS1 in Europe has published the “Recommendations for EU Regulation 2018/574 implementation while minimising retail supply chain disruption” which provide suggestions to GS1 MOs on how to minimise retail supply chain issues while correctly implementing the recent EU tobacco track and trace rules to fight against illicit trade.