Does the European Union want to ban toilet paper and make people use an alternative made out of straw or just water and soap to help stop deforestation? No, that's not true: A search performed by Lead Stories on September 4, 2023, for the phrase "eu wants to ban toilet paper" and "eu mandatory alternative to toilet paper" in English and "EÚ chce zakázať toaletný papier" and "povinná alternatíva toaletného papiera v EU" in Slovak, using Google News' index of thousands of credible news sites, did not reveal any factual reports that this would be something on the European Union agenda.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on TikTok where it was published by @verteneverte1 on August 30, 2023, under the title: "The end of toilet paper as we know it!"
It opened:
The EU wants to ban toilet paper as it is not good for the environment. This is the same reason the EU wants to replace gas and diesel cars with electric cars. The Spanish media inform that the EU started replacing traditional toilet paper with toilet paper made out of straw. But it is possible we will abandon toilet paper altogether and will only use water and soap.
(Translation from Slovak to English by Lead Stories staff).
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Fri Sep 1 10:23:51 2023 UTC)
The same claim also appeared in a video posted on TikTok by @cat.wo.man3. It may have originated from some other misinformation. For example, a joke posted on April 1, 2023, by news agency Mediafax claiming that the European Union would ban toilet paper from 2025 has been picked up and distributed by Romanian websites as true information, for example republica.co, abcnewsromania.ro, jurnalfm.ro.
In April 2023, the European Parliament passed a new law to fight deforestation. While no country or commodity will be banned, companies will only be allowed to sell products in the EU if the supplier of the product has issued a so-called "due diligence" statement confirming that the product does not come from deforested land or has led to forest degradation, including of irreplaceable primary forests, after 31 December 2020, as explained in a press release issued on April 19, 2023.
