GERMANY:Germans could soon be more Irish than the Irish themselves with a new plan to ban smoking in restaurants, schools and public buildings - but not in pubs.
The prospect of Germany becoming a smokers' refuge in Europe, the last place where you can enjoy a cigarette with a quiet pint, has come closer with a federal government compromise proposal to regulate smoking in public.
The proposed legislation would ban smoking in restaurants, hospitals, universities and public buildings, though smokers could still be accommodated in a separate, sealed smoking area.
Smoking would still be permitted in businesses where no food is prepared, primarily pubs.
Rather than follow Ireland's example of framing the law to protect workers' health, German lawmakers have come up with their own rule - smoking or dining, not both.
But that rule has already become bogged down in the special pleading and semantics Irish lawmakers managed to avoid with their across-the-board ban.
For instance, there's a plan to ban smoking in discos but not in nightclubs. But what's the difference? The music?
"If we did it the way they did it in Ireland than it would have been easy, but they don't like easy here," sighed an employee in the consumer protection ministry yesterday.
For a country obsessed with health and the environment, German attitudes towards smoking seem stuck in another era.
Around 140,000 German smokers die annually from smoking-related illnesses and around 3,300 non-smokers die annually as a consequence of passive smoking.
Yet it is not unusual for your neighbour in a restaurant to light up just as your main course arrives and blue smoke hangs over press conferences in the chancellory.
"For a total smoking ban you'd need a government majority, and resistance to more regulation runs right through the political parties," said an official at the health ministry who asked not to be named.
Anti-smoking groups complain that German politicians enjoy an especially close relationship to cigarette companies.
The effectiveness of the cigarette lobby can be seen everywhere in Germany, from relatively unrestricted poster and cinema advertising to cigarette vending machines in bars and even on streets.
Ulla Schmidt, the federal health minister, called the proposed compromise a "huge step" while leading Green politician Bärbel Höhn called it "absurd".
"Precisely where people smoke most and where the health dangers are the highest, everything will remain as it is," she said.