After years of conflict about a smoking ban, Bavarians will finally make up their minds about the issue in a referendum tomorrow, writes DEREK SCALLYin Berlin
THE CASTLE TAVERN in Leutstetten, near Munich, is a picture-perfect Bavarian pub. A blue-and-white maypole towers over the beer garden while, inside, a portrait of King Ludwig watches over locals enjoying a cool beer and a chat. But talk here of the World Cup has been pushed aside in recent days in favour of another hot topic: tomorrow’s referendum on a smoking ban in Bavarian pubs, clubs and restaurants.
“Personally I’m in favour of a smoking ban, just so I don’t have to go into a cloud of old cigarette smoke in the bar each morning,” says proprietor Hans Sattlegger. “But I have two rooms and can keep the smokers separate. Not so the smaller standing-room pubs. They’ll feel the pinch of a ban.”
Germany’s smoking ban has become a long-running joke here. First introduced in 2008, the law was so full of loopholes and contradictions that it was set aside by a federal court a year later. After a brief interlude, smoking returned to many, if not all, German bars. So, rather than wait for a new federal law, many of Germany’s 16 states have pressed on with their own laws, creating a crazy paving of laws with varying levels of strictness.
Tomorrow’s vote throws up some interesting questions, about Bavaria and its beer-hall culture but also about Ireland’s successful ban on smoking in 2006. For example, why is a German state with little tradition of referendums putting a smoking ban to a popular vote, while Ireland’s ban went through without a vote despite the State’s lively plebiscite tradition? And even more intriguingly, do the smoke-filled confusion and passionate resistance to a smoking ban in Germany turn cultural stereotypes on their head? Once upon a time Ireland was the place where well-intentioned laws were never properly implemented or policed. Germany, on the other hand, was where everyone stuck to the rules to a ridiculous degree, such as waiting for the green man at a deserted pedestrian crossing at 2am. Yet it was the Irish who stuck to their smoking ban with a Teutonic rigidity and the Germans who first fumbled the law, then embraced the smoking-ban confusion with a subversive glee worthy of the Irish rebel tradition.
“Germans have similar attitudes about the Irish as they do about the Italians, yet in both those countries the smoking bans went through without a fuss, unlike here,” says Prof Harald Schoen of the University of Bamberg, who is studying the Bavarian referendum.
A look at the statistics suggests that the Irish are far tamer than they might think on this matter. In a 2006 Eurobarometer survey examining public support for a state smoking ban, Ireland topped the list of 27 EU countries while Germany was in the bottom third, just ahead of Bulgaria.
Tomorrow’s referendum is particularly interesting because, of all Germany’s regions, it is Bavaria that shares most closely the Irish love of socialising and drinking. Yet, unlike the Irish, many Bavarians, judging by the resistance to an all-out ban, feel that tomorrow’s vote impinges on their personal freedom of choice.
The smoking ban is a highly politicised affair in Bavaria, where the dominant political party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), blames attempts at a ban for its worst election result in state elections two years ago. After that disastrous poll, it loosened regulations to allow smoking in small pubs, in separate rooms in larger pubs, and in Oktoberfest tents – all places to which young people have no access.
Final polls predict a neck-and-neck result tomorrow between Bavarians who will vote yes to a total smoking ban – except outdoors and in private – and those who will vote no so as to retain the status quo.
In its campaigning, the Yes camp has pushed the health dangers of passive smoking, while the No camp has pushed the personal-freedom angle.
“The two campaigns are not fighting each other but talking completely at cross purposes,” says Prof Schoen.
The No camp, backed by the cigarette lobby, is confident it can head off a total ban. “Bavarians like their freedoms and don’t like being patronised or having things taken from them,” says Marille Hiller, director of a cigarette-machine company that has seen its revenues fall by a third.
Supporters of a total ban, backed by the Green Party and the local Eco-Democrats (ÖDP), dismiss the No camp claims that smoking is part of the Bavarian pub tradition. “A century ago people peed under the table rather than get up,” says Yes campaigner Sebastian Frenken. “If that was once part of the Bavarian beer-hall culture, then we can ban smoking now, too.”
