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The Czech Agriculture and Food Inspection Authority (CAFIA) repeatedly reminds retail sellers of cigarettes and roll-your-own tobacco that there is a new registration obligation in order to trace tobacco products, namely since 20^th May 2019. The registration process can be made for free via the on-line form of the State Printing Works of Securities (Státní tiskárna cenin).

CAFIA is authorized by the law to check whether this obligation is kept. To facilitate the communication with the sellers of the tobacco products concerned, CAFIA created a special e-mail address TTT@szpi.gov.cz where the operators can refer to with questions related to the newly arisen obligations. CAFIA further recommends that sellers should get familiarized with information on its website, namely with Section Traceability of Tobacco Products established in April 2018. Entire information necessary for the sellers is also summarized in the CAFIA Press Release of 8^th February 2019.

A distributor and seller of tobacco products that fails to make the mentioned registration won’t be allowed to offer cigarettes and roll-your-own tobacco made or imported to the EU after 20^th May 2019. Sellers may sell their stocks of cigarettes and roll-your-own tobacco made or imported into the EU before 20^th May 2019  – thus which haven not been provided with a unique identifier yet no longer than one year, thus by 20^th May 2020 at the latest.

Registration obligation for sellers of tobacco products and for further economic entities arose in connection with entering Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2018/574 on technical standards for the establishment and operation of a traceability system for tobacco products into force, of which aim is to prevent illegal sale of foodstuffs on the EU territory. Essential element of the Regulation is provision of each packaging unit, thus for example a pack of cigarettes, by a unique identifier and further assignment of identification codes to all entities involved starting from producers up to final retailers (tobacco shops, supermarkets, e-shops, vending machines). The entities are thus able to record movement of each packaging of the tobacco products from the producer to the distributor up to final consumers. The recorded data on the movement of the tobacco products are entered into the data storage systems. The unique identifier means an alphanumeric code placed on the product packaging, which is impossible to remove. Data matrix, QR code or DotCode are options of such code.