Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-12-17-Speech-2-275"
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"en.20021217.8.2-275"2
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"Madam President, I thank the Commissioner. His contribution was short and sweet but at this stage most of the talking has been done. I would like to thank my colleague in absentia, Mr Nisticò, for the enormous amount of work he has done on this particular directive. It has come back to us from conciliation quite satisfactorily.
The final issue on which the debate rested was whether a doctor would be responsible for the assessment of the eligibility of donors, whereas the Council wanted a health professional and deemed that to be sufficient. The compromise is that both Parliament and the Council have agreed on a qualified health professional. In the spirit of conciliation that is quite satisfactory. Others might give it another name, but it gets us to where we want to be at this point. I thank all those who spent a lot of time and effort in getting to this position.
The directive before us deals with the collection, testing, processing, storage and distribution of human blood. It is quite a contentious issue in many of our Member States, not least in our own. We have had a tribunal, known as the Lindsey tribunal, which was wound up recently, having sat for some time trying to resolve the very tragic cases of patients, many of whom have since died, who received infected blood. Other countries have had similar experiences.
One of the most important aspects of this directive is that it will restore confidence in blood transfusion services generally and in the movement of blood and blood products throughout the European Union so we can all have confidence in other Member State systems in relation to it.
This new directive, together with the existing Directive 89/381/EEC, will ensure that binding Community legislation will apply now to blood and blood products whatever the intended purpose. Apart from blood and blood products, it will also cover the whole area of patients donating their own blood prior to surgery in hospitals and cover regulation in that area specifically as well.
There was quite a lot of contention at earlier readings on this directive as to whether all donations had to be voluntary or unremunerated. That should be the culture; that must be the ethos we foster. While we should never risk rare blood groups or rare blood products being unavailable to patients through our unwillingness to pay, that must be the exception. Payment can take many forms in terms of expenses or just compensating for lost hours at work, as distinct from profit in terms of payment.
The views of the patient groups, which were very strong at first and second reading, were that we must not rule out remuneration, but it must not be the rule. We must continue with the voluntary ethos. I welcome the return of this report from conciliation and I hope it will not be too long before all our Member States transpose it and it becomes law."@en1
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