The European Union (EU) Tobacco Product Directive bans tobacco products with characterizing flavors, within this process the independent advisory panel (IAP) is tasked with issuing opinions on whether a tobacco product has a characterizing flavor and as appropriate, the panel shall request input from a technical group of sensory and chemical assessors. The approach for specifying the methodology for whether a tobacco product imparts a characterizing flavor is based on a comparison of the smelling properties of test products with those of reference products through sensory analysis, complemented by a chemical assessment of the product composition through chemical analyses. Within this framework and in the past year, the Technical Group has maintained a high level of operational expertise, with over 1500 training and test samples assessed during >150 evaluation sessions, with >50 different flavor compounds tested. Within the next timeframe, the skills and behaviors of the sensory assessors will continue to be monitored and improved so as to maintain the current high level of operations needed to support IAP in its decision-making process.