Budget supermarket group Lidl is to stop selling tobacco products at all its stores with immediate effect, over two years ahead of a national ban.

The company said in 2018 that it planned to phase out tobacco and none of the stores opened in the Netherlands this year sell cigarettes, a spokesman told broadcaster NOS.

The German company opened its first two stores in the Netherlands in 1997 and now has 435 nationwide.

All supermarkets must have stopped selling tobacco in 2024 as part of government efforts to create a ‘smoke free generation’.

Some 22% of the Dutch population still smoke and 35,000 people in the Netherlands a year die from the effects of smoking, being overweight or problem drinking.