Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-10-22-Speech-3-285"
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"en.20031022.12.3-285"2
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"Mr President, the despicable and illegal trade in human organs is one that we must endeavour to address. In his report Mr Evans does this and adds useful points that complement those made by the Council in the initial proposal. I have however, along with my colleague Mr Liese, in the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy, tabled supplementary amendments aimed at clarifying the text. The most important of these concerns penalties.
We felt it was necessary to send out the right signals both to traffickers and donors. It is for this reason that we have suggested the reinstatement of Article 2(2)(d). This paragraph states that it is a punishable offence to receive or demand money for organ removal. My committee deleted this proposal, but I feel that it should be included in the text so as to discourage unregulated organ donation whenever possible. In order to avoid penalising those who have already suffered enough through exploitive organ donation, we have suggested the insertion of a provision under which penalties may be reduced in certain circumstances.
Organised criminals should not take advantage of either naive or opportunistic people in order to create a market of unsafe and unregulated organs. It is far preferable to encourage legal and legitimate organ donation. It is for this reason that I wish to underline the importance of voluntary organ donation.
The underlying cause of organ trafficking is a lack of available organs. In the UK alone, 5700 people tonight are waiting for a transplant but less than 3000 transplants are carried out each year. Last year nearly 400 people died in the UK waiting for a transplant. An EU-wide crack-down on organ trafficking must go hand-in-hand with information campaigns on organ tissue and cell donation at European and national level. We should encourage European citizens to join national donor schemes and to make their wishes known to their families or their legal representatives.
I have carried my donor card for many years. I actively support the NHS organ donor campaign. I encourage others to support similar campaigns in their Member States. This is an area in which we really can cooperate with one another in order to achieve the most important result of all, the result of saving many lives."@en1
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