Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-04-03-Speech-2-293"
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"en.20010403.12.2-293"2
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".
Mr President, the health programme on which we are about to vote is the first integrated EU venture in this sector. This is a favourable time to promote such an initiative, in view of both the considerable advances in information collection and dissemination technology and the increased awareness Europeans have of the quality of life, on which health protection can have a catalysing influence. In this new programme, an overall approach is adopted, both for health and the methods, mechanisms and practices used to tackle health issues.
Thus, the programme sets three objectives, to be achieved through close overall and two-way cooperation between Member States. The first objective is to collect, process and disseminate medical data, information, practices and knowledge from all sources. The second objective is to create a mechanism for a direct, rapid and coordinated Community response to health threats. The third objective is to tackle factors which are lifestyle-related health determinants, socio-economic health determinants and environment-related health determinants.
These factors will be studied, so that a strategy and policies can be drawn up designed to ensure that individual measures are of a high quality and to make health protection more effective. However, the programme’s major weakness is the fact that it lacks the coordinating centre which is absolutely vital in such an extended, complicated endeavour in which the national services of the Member States, non-governmental organisations, international bodies, Commission departments, existing and developing programme networks are involved, as the programme proposes, together with numerous other factors. I focused my attention on this deficiency in particular and, after some consideration and several consultations, I finally decided on a proposal for creating a Health Coordination and Monitoring Centre, my proposal being that this centre would operate within the framework of the Community, i.e. the European Commission, and the programme, with the assistance of a committee made up of representatives of the Member States. This will ensure that all the objectives are achieved in the best way possible.
As well as the coordination objective, several other objectives have been included which are connected with the introduction of an integrated health strategy through the development of an inter-sectoral policy in the definition and implementation of all Community policies and activities. The programme to tackle health determinants proposes adding the development of strategies and measures on genetic, antenatal and biological determinants which obviously affect health. Similarly, supporting action to identify and determine best practices and guidelines for health is a basic factor in safeguarding a high level of health protection and preventing illness. Obviously, without comparability of information, compatibility of data and interoperability of systems and networks which are being developed or which will be developed within the programme, the measure will have a limited impact and the Community action will not be successful. For this reason, binding provisions are being introduced for the development of comparable health data and compatible information systems as well as express provision for the protection of personal data.
Another factor which I consider extremely important is the budget. There must always be a correspondence between the objectives set and the means available to achieve them. In my opinion, this correspondence is not ensured in the proposed programme for two reasons: first, the programme’s measures, as described, are particularly extensive and ambitious and, secondly, the extension of the existing programmes in the health sector adopted last December has already reduced the original budget of EUR 300 million by approximately EUR 80 million.
In view of the above, amendments have been proposed so that the objectives of the programme can be achieved. Furthermore, we should not forget for an instant the fact that, after successive crises – bovine spongiform encephalopathy, dioxin, foot-and-mouth – public health is a major EU priority, even taking precedence over its other policies.
This programme has come along at the right time, a time of considerable advances in information technology and surprising achievements in atomic biology, genetic engineering and biotechnology, all of which will radically change preventive medicine and therefore be instrumental in preventing disease.
Finally, I should like to say that, if we are to strengthen the foundations of the European structure, we need convergence not just at strategy and policy level in the economic sector or in the foreign policy and security sector; we also need convergence in individual sectors such as health, education, etc. These are new forms of integration which I refer to as new convergences and which add breadth and depth to the unification process. I therefore consider that the new programme represents the start of just such a convergence process in the vitally important public health sector."@en1
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