Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-04-03-Speech-2-301"
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"en.20010403.12.2-301"2
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"Mr President, it is appropriate, I suppose, that this measure has reached this plenary in World Health Week, with its particular emphasis on mental health. The week before last, in Parliament, we were launching the epilepsy White Paper. Some 15 million of our fellow Europeans will be afflicted by that illness during their lifetime at a cost of some EUR 20 billion per year, plus the cost to the individual and families of lost income and the cost to Member States of lost tax revenues. Multiply that by all the diseases and disorders, physical and mental, add the impact of ending the communist system in Eastern Europe and the two-way cross-border movement of health problems, from environmental pollution to sexual and drug-related diseases, and the economic impact of health problems is colossal.
The European Union has no competence for health services, but it has always had competence for health and safety at work, and then for public health and infectious diseases which have no respect for national borders. More recently it has been given competence for health promotion and illness prevention and health impact assessments. Now we have to take this forward with the reforms of our health action programme that this report suggests. I commend this report, the work of the rapporteur and the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy's additions to his work. We shall raise standards of health in the European Union, not by directives, but by research, education and the identification and dissemination of good practice. It will not cost the tax-payers an arm and a leg: just EUR 83 million per year, if our committee position is accepted – a tiny sum for a massive challenge.
We are told that the Council will not accept EUR 83 million per year for six years, but EUR 63 million per year is what was being spent under the old programme. If you just add some 5% per year for six years, that would mean EUR 83 million. If you take the Commission proposal of EUR 50 million and reduce it by the same amount then you would be cutting health budgets to EUR 37 million in real terms when we are taking on these new responsibilities.
If they do, let it be on their consciences that they voted against EUR 20 million per year for health, while endorsing an annual budget of over EUR 1 000 million for subsidising the growing of tobacco."@en1
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