High cost of cigarette packaging change

"Le coût élevé des changements sur les paquets de cigarettes"
B2 writing exercise

Learn about the cost of the new policy on cigarette packaging in France.

Pay attention to the hints!

Some vocabulary you may want to look up before or during this exercise: "a cigarette pack", "to come into effect (law)", "to dictate", "neutral packaging", "a tobacconist", "in stock", "in the face of (challenge)", "the Ministry of Finance [US: Treasury Department] (France)", "a middleman company".

I’ll give you some sentences to translate into %s

  • I’ll show you where you make mistakes
  • I’ll keep track of what you need to practise
  • Change my choices if you want
Start the exercise
How the test works

Here's a preview of the text for the writing challenge, when you're ready click the start button above:

Old cigarette packs are going to cost the French State 100 million euros  Since January 1st 2017, a new law has come into effect, which dictates that cigarettes must be sold in "neutral" packaging. But at the same time, this law forbids tobacconists to sell the old packs that they still had in stock! In the face of their anger, the Ministry of Finance [US: Treasury Department] had promised that the unsold items would be refunded. But that was before they received more than 15 million packs from the 26,000 tobacconists in France, which are worth about 100 million euros! After trying to modify the terms of repayment by asking that the packs be identified with their delivery date - which the middleman company was in no position to do - the Ministry finally confirmed this Monday that it would indeed refund the whole of the returned packs.

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