Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel has surprisingly expressed support for a ban on tobacco advertising, Spiegel Online reported.

Tobacco advertising is prohibited in the EU – except in Germany. Until now, the CDU-CSU parliamentary group had prevented the ban. Now Chancellor Angela Merkel is campaigning for such a ban, the report said. “If it were up to me, we should ban the advertising of tobacco products,” she was quoted as saying during a question-and-answer session in the German federal parliament (Bundestag).
She admitted, however, that this issue was being discussed very controversially in her own parliamentary group. By the end of the year, an attitude will be found, Merkel said. In the last parliamentary term, an attempt to ban outdoor advertising had failed due to opposition from the CDU-CSU parliamentary group. In 2016, the cabinet approved a draft to ban tobacco advertising on billboards and in cinemas from 2020. But the law was never passed, according to the report.