The European Commission is planning to ban smoking in public places in all EU member states, EUobserver has announced.

The EU Health Commissioner, John Dalli, has stated that he wanted to put a stop to the different standards in the different EU countries.

"We need a complete ban on smoking in all public places, transport and the workplace," he said in an interview for the German daily Die Welt.

Dalli announced that Brussels was preparing a bill, which would be brought forward next year. According to him, exceptions should not be tolerated because "it is not about the health of visitors, but also the employees."

The EC will also try to create rules on making tobacco products less visible to customers and making their packaging as unattractive as possible.

The packets would appear identical and would have colorful warning pictures, such as of diseased lungs, as well as more information on the toxins the product contains.

The smoking ban had different levels of success in the different EU member states. In Belgium, people are still allowed to smoke in establishments that do not serve food.

The Greek Health Minister, Andreas Loverdos, has admitted a failure of the 2009 smoking ban, saying that eight out of ten bars openly violated the law.

In Bulgaria, after being in force just for three days, the full smoking ban, adopted by the previous parliament, was officially abolished as of June 4 with the reason that the relaxation of the ban would avoid hurting the tourist industry during tough economic times.

Bulgaria ranks second after Greece in the EU in terms of number of regular smokers as a percentage of the population, according to a Eurobarometer survey.

According to the EUobserver, smoking kills about 650,000 Europeans every year.

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