Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-03-11-Speech-4-036"
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"en.20040311.3.4-036"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, Mrs Jöns, ladies and gentlemen, with the 14 January report on services of general interest, we made it very clear that social and health policy issues are issues of general interest. The internal market is not the only starting point for today’s debate. Demographic changes, affecting the whole of Europe and our entire continent, represent the greatest challenge to our policies – be they on the labour market, the economy, social affairs, health, or the Budget. If we want to build up the internal market, create mobility and flexibility as well as social security, whilst at the same time facing up together to the great challenges to our policies on civil society, we will not be able to reduce them to a matter of national borders.
In my capacity as President of the Austrian Aid Organisation, I face these challenges on a daily basis. What we have to do, I believe, is to review the public sector’s effectively statutory functions and the consequent transfer of public tasks carried out by the non-statutory sector to private non-profit service providers at national, regional and local level. The person being cared for must have a choice in where they stay and are cared for if they are to enjoy the right to self-determination. Even when they are in need of care, most people want to stay in their own homes. They can often be better looked after by mobile care services, which adjust more flexibly to the patient’s actual needs, and this also represents a much more economic use of the resources available. What this requires, though, is firstly that the quality of the care service be regulated not merely at the national level, but also across borders, with as much standardisation as possible, and at least in a coordinated way; that the training of care workers be organised as far as possible to a national standard and coordinated throughout Europe; that service providers be assessed in a transparent and objective way; and that funding be secured by way of long-term contracts.
Mobile services and the ancillary services on which they depend need to be upgraded and extended. They need to be integrated, with better management of the interface between nursing homes and the mobile services, and the promotion of an overarching and patient-oriented case management
Let me conclude by saying that there is a need for more resources within reach of family members and more support and assistance for them; both the state and Europe must create the regulatory environment that is needed if that is to happen."@en1
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