Mosley: Governments Must Respect Tobacco Ban Date

The head of motor sport's world governing body Max Mosley urged governments to respect the internationally-agreed date for an end to tobacco advertising at Formula One races or risk losing their Grand Prix events.

Mosley's International Automobile Federation (FIA) have agreed to stop all tobacco advertising at the end of the 2006 season and at a news conference on Saturday he warned countries not to create their own bans before that date.

"The situation with tobacco is that we believe that it is essential that if a ban comes in it be worldwide and on a worldwide basis because if you start banning tobacco advertising in individual countries it is like trying to push the air out of a mattress - it simply goes somewhere else as far as the Grands Prix are concerned," said Mosley.

"Countries which do not observe that date risk a gap between whenever they bring in a ban and the worldwide date of 2006 where they perhaps wouldn't have a Grand Prix and that's never in anybody's interest," added the FIA chief.

Mosley said that there would be little point in individual countries banning tobacco advertisements before 2006 when companies would still be allowed to display their logos at races elsewhere.

"It is also, without a worldwide ban, completely futile for an individual country to ban it because even if they were to succeed in preventing tobacco advertising at a given Grand Prix, their Grand Prix, they still get the television images coming all year from the other countries with the tobacco (advertising).

"The only effective elimination of tobacco sponsorship would be on a worldwide basis, honouring the worldwide date. Anyone who doesn't stick to the worldwide date risks getting themselves into a situation where they don't have a Grand Prix but for no purpose.

"So all common sense and rationality dictates that we should have one date throughout the world," said Mosley.

Mosley is hoping that European legislators will accept 2006 as the cut-off date when they meet to discuss the issue in Strasbourg next week.

"There is a hearing in the European parliament on Monday on this whole question and at the moment the proposal from the EU (European Union) is that there should be a final ban on July 1 2005.

"We are going to suggest that the EU adopt the world date which is the end of the 2006 season. That date has already been adopted in certain countries, for example Australia. It is really in everybody's interest that everyone observes that date," said Mosley.