Age verification for vape stores: EU

Article 20 of Directive 2014/40/EU, the Tobacco Products Directive, is the European Union's complete statement on electronic cigarettes. It runs to eleven paragraphs. It fixes a notification period, two container volumes, a nicotine ceiling, leaflet contents, health warning wording, five categories of prohibited promotion, an annual reporting duty and a vigilance obligation.

It does not contain an age of sale. Nowhere in Article 20 is there a number a retailer could put in a date-of-birth comparison, and the Directive supplies none elsewhere for vapes.

That is not an omission to be worked around. It is the division of labour the Directive was built on, and it explains why EU vape compliance splits cleanly into two systems that share almost nothing: a product regime that is harmonised and detailed, and a customer regime that is national and invisible from Brussels.

What Article 20 does regulate

The product side starts before the first sale. Article 20(2) requires manufacturers and importers to submit a notification to the competent authorities of each Member State "in electronic form six months before the intended placing on the market", with a new notification "for each substantial modification of the product". The notification carries an ingredient list, emissions data, toxicological data, nicotine dose and uptake information, a description of components and of the production process.

Article 20(3) then sets the physical limits a catalogue has to respect: nicotine-containing liquid only in "dedicated refill containers not exceeding a volume of 10 ml, in disposable electronic cigarettes or in single use cartridges", cartridges and tanks not exceeding 2 ml, and liquid that "does not contain nicotine in excess of 20 mg/ml". Products must be child- and tamper-proof and must deliver nicotine "at consistent levels under normal conditions of use".

Article 20(5)(a) is the paragraph that shapes how a vape store may speak. Commercial communications "in Information Society services, in the press and other printed publications, with the aim or direct or indirect effect of promoting electronic cigarettes and refill containers" are prohibited, with a narrow exception for trade publications. Radio, sponsorship with cross-border effects and audiovisual commercial communications are prohibited under points (b) to (e).

Nicotine is the hinge of the whole article

Every one of those duties is triggered by a definition that turns on the substance. Article 2(16) defines an electronic cigarette as "a product that can be used for consumption of nicotine-containing vapour via a mouth piece, or any component of that product", and Article 2(17) defines a refill container as "a receptacle that contains a nicotine-containing liquid, which can be used to refill an electronic cigarette."

A zero-nicotine liquid is therefore not a refill container, and the 10 ml limit, the notification duty, the warning text and the leaflet requirement do not reach it. The device remains in scope, because it can be used with nicotine-containing liquid; the bottle beside it does not. Any Member State that wants nicotine-free liquid regulated has to do it in national law, and several have.

The one EU age duty arrives by cross-reference

Article 20(6) is a single sentence: "Article 18 of this Directive shall apply to cross-border distance sales of electronic cigarettes and refill containers."

That sentence, and only that sentence, produces an EU-level age obligation for vapes. Article 18(4) requires retail outlets engaged in cross-border distance sales to operate an age verification system which verifies, at the time of sale, that the consumer meets the minimum age "provided for under the national law of the Member State of destination". Article 2(36) defines the system precisely enough to exclude the usual implementation: "a computing system that unambiguously confirms the consumer's age electronically in accordance with national requirements."

Read the scope of that duty carefully. It attaches to cross-border distance sales. A vape store selling to customers in its own country — over a counter or over its own website — is outside Article 18 entirely, and the age rule it must follow comes from national law, with no EU floor beneath it.

Where the catalogue stops travelling

Article 24(1) is the free movement rule: Member States may not, for considerations relating to aspects regulated by the Directive, prohibit or restrict the placing on the market of compliant products. Article 24(3) is the exception that has done the most work in this sector. A Member State "may also prohibit a certain category of tobacco or related products" on grounds relating to its specific situation, provided the measure is justified by the need to protect public health, and must notify the Commission — which has six months to approve or reject, after which "the national provisions shall be deemed to be approved."

France used it. LOI n° 2025-175 du 24 février 2025 inserted an article L. 3513-5-1 into the code de la santé publique prohibiting the holding for sale, offering, sale, distribution and free supply of vaping devices pre-filled with liquid that cannot be refilled — whether or not the battery is rechargeable, and with cartridges excluded. The prohibition applies from 26 February 2025.

Article 20(11) supplies a second route, and it runs the other way. Where a competent authority has reasonable grounds to believe that a specific product or type of product "could present a serious risk to human health", it may take provisional measures and must inform the Commission. Where the placing on the market of a type of e-cigarette or refill container "has been prohibited on duly justified grounds in at least three Member States", the Commission may adopt a delegated act extending that prohibition to all of them.

A national ban is therefore not only a hole in one market's catalogue. Past a threshold of three, it is a candidate for becoming the rule everywhere, without a new directive.

The practical effect on a store selling across borders is that Article 20 tells it what a lawful product looks like, Article 24(3) tells it that the answer changes by country, and neither tells it how old the buyer has to be. Three independent lookups, keyed to the same order.

What this looks like in practice

• Keep the product matrix and the age matrix apart. One is harmonised by Article 20; the other is national and moves independently.
• Resolve the age threshold from the destination country, not from a house standard. Article 18(4) measures against national law where the consumer is.
• Build the age check as a system that confirms age, not one that collects an assertion. Article 2(36) says "computing system" and "unambiguously".
• Do not assume zero-nicotine lines carry the Article 20 obligations, or that they are unregulated. They sit outside the Directive and inside whatever national law covers them.
• Treat category bans as a per-country catalogue filter, checked when it changes. Article 24(3) approvals can arrive by the Commission's silence.
• Keep marketing out of the sales channel design. Article 20(5)(a) prohibits promotional commercial communications in information society services, which is where a vape store's own site lives.

The Directive describes a vape in more detail than any other jurisdiction in this series. It leaves the customer to twenty-seven legislatures, and a store selling into more than one of them is running two compliance programmes that never meet.