But herein lies the rub: while attaining high-level agreement at international meetings and through international declarations provides part of the solution, this only goes so far. Translating such a commitment at regional and individual state levels requires effective dialogue, real communication, and co-operation – but also, crucially, political commitment and money. In an age of international austerity, the demands of global health can frequently be shunted to one side. There are examples where global public health measures have had influence on the approaches of regional political groupings and states. One example is the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2003, which has proved influential in guiding approaches of member states who are signatories to the Convention. In Europe, for example, engagement with the Convention has provided some of the backdrop to the European Union’s (EU) efforts in this area, culminating in new regulation in the form of the Tobacco Directive in 2014. Yet even the latter measure illustrates the problems of trying to enable global health and global justice in the light of political and, at times murky, business realities. The progress of the Directive was accompanied by the resignation of the EU Health Commissioner, John Dalli, in October 2012 and an investigation by the European Ombudsman into complaints that the Commissioner did not disclose some 114 meetings with lobbyists from the tobacco industry.