Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-04-07-Speech-1-057"
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"en.20030407.4.1-057"2
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". – Madam President, it is particularly appropriate that we are having this fairly in-depth discussion in Parliament on this issue today, World Health Day.
I shall respond to a number of issues which you have raised. Specifically, Mr Whitehead asked me about the need for a rapid response system. We have such a thing in place – the communicable disease network – which does valuable work in this area and has been doing valuable work in response to this particular outbreak of SARS.
We are in very close contact with the World Health Organization, not just from institution to institution. Since last year, a transfer of experts has taken place, with some WHO people working with us and some of our people working with them. This assists greatly in the transfer of information and knowledge between the institutions. The WHO has a team presently in place in China, carrying out the important work of determining what further needs to be done. I will review all of these issues with Dr Brundtland, the Director-General of the WHO, when I meet her at my next meeting on 6 May.
It is also particularly appropriate that many of you asked about the extent to which we may need to extend the competences at EU level. I am a little more optimistic about this than some of the speakers in this debate. I have discussed this with a number of Members of this House, and with a number of government ministers, for quite some time now. I am happy to say that this idea has found its way into a number of different fora, not least in the committee chaired by Mr Katiforis in his report that was presented to the Convention some weeks ago.
That report contained a number of recommendations, the weight of which was that there should be something in the Treaties creating an extended competence for public health which would provide us with a legal base to bring forward harmonising legislation in the area of public health. As someone said earlier in the debate, we have far greater powers in relation to animal health than to human health. I know that a lot of people in the House are concerned about this. I am also concerned about it. We need to change that. I have raised this matter a number of times at Commission meetings. I am very happy to tell the House that it is Commission policy that we pursue this issue in the Convention. We have already pursued it in Mr Katiforis' committee and elsewhere.
One of the issues I am currently working on in my own directorate-general is the shape of a new Article 152, which it would be desirable to include in a new constitutional treaty; this would provide the kind of legal base which, as many of you have argued here this evening, is necessary to establish a sufficient base for harmonising legislation in the area of communicable diseases and other areas.
I have some cautious optimism that the Convention will take these ideas on board, that they will find their way into a final report and ultimately be discussed in an IGC and, I hope, eventually take their place in the final shape of the Convention that we ultimately put before the people of Europe."@en1
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