Multilevel Governance and the Regulation of Noncommunicable Diseases (NCDs) in the European Union

Since the advent of the body of thought known as the New Public Health (health promotion) in the 1970s, campaigns against noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) such as tobacco, alcohol, and obesity have become increasingly common on multiple levels.  This is certainly true within the European Union. These policies have utilised multiple policy tools, ranging from public education campaigns and voluntary self-regulation of industries to governmental regulation through restrictive laws on advertising and availability of products, taxation, and even prohibition. Nongovernmental actors, in the form of NGOs and policy entrepreneurs as well as trade associations, have cooperated with governmental bodies in developing and carrying out several of these policies. This paper will compare the policies toward these three products within the countries of the European Union and the influence of the different levels of government. It will be especially concerned with how the relatively successful fight, on both the state and EU levels, to ‘denormalise’ tobacco consumption politically has become a reference model for other, more contested issues, such as alcohol consumption and obesity. In performing this survey, reliance will be placed on the five factors identified as important in policy change for tobacco (agenda, ideas, institutions, networks, and socioeconomic setting). Emphasis will be placed on the similarities and differences between tobacco and the two other NCD issues, as identified through an analysis of the aforementioned factors