Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-03-30-Speech-2-265"
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen.
In the report, Parliament points out the risk of duplication of work, of our failing to take account of existing research results or work done by the World Health Organisation, for example. We are fully aware of this risk; indeed, coordinating data from different areas is one of our most important tasks. I should like to emphasise that, when working on this Environment and Health Strategy, we cooperated with and consulted the World Health Organisation from the outset.
By way of conclusion, I wish to thank Parliament once more for its support on this very important issue which, I assume, is close to all our hearts. Together with the comments from other institutions and from interest groups, this report, and especially the work done by Mrs Paulsen, will help us to develop a good, effective action plan.
Thank you for your attention.
First of all, I should like to thank Parliament for its response to the Commission communication on a European Environment and Health Strategy. In particular, I should like to thank the two rapporteurs, first Mr Ries and then Mrs Paulsen, for their work, and that also goes for the whole of Mrs Paulsen’s time as a Member of the European Parliament and her remarkably good work in this particular area.
Environment and health is an issue that affects us all. According to the latest Eurobarometer surveys, 89% of European citizens are concerned about the impact of the environment on their health. Nearly ten per cent say that they have a close relative or family member that is suffering from an environment-related illness.
Our knowledge of which environmental factors actually give rise to certain effects on health is still fairly limited. Diseases are caused by many different factors, often in combination. We do not currently know with absolute certainty the degree to which the environment contributes to diseases. Indeed, one of the main objectives of this Strategy is to increase our knowledge and thus obtain a better basis for tackling the problems.
The basic idea is to bring environment, health and research together in order to improve our understanding of, and thus tackle more effectively, the complicated link between environment and disease. I make no secret of the fact that this also entails a challenge as, in our traditional roles, we are not always accustomed to working horizontally across the traditional boundaries between different research disciplines and policy areas.
We are currently working on an action plan for 2004–2010. We shall present this at the Ministerial Conference on Environment and Health in Budapest in June 2004, which is a pan-European meeting. Experts and interest groups from throughout the enlarged EU have participated in the preparations for this action plan. Regional conferences have been held in Warsaw, Rome and Brussels, where many of the issues addressed by Parliament in its report have been discussed.
It is important to bear in mind that this is a long-term strategy. Completing our knowledge of the part the environment plays in various health problems will take time. Parliament has been expressing concern that the Strategy only concentrates on data collection and research. This is true in a sense, but we need this data in order to determine how best to direct our efforts. This does not mean that we are intending to stay passive in the meanwhile. There are certain areas where we cannot risk waiting until our knowledge is complete, but need to act according to the precautionary principle, and we shall do so.
For the first cycle, in the period 2004 to 2010, we have selected a number of diseases and priority substances for particular consideration: childhood respiratory diseases, asthma and allergies, neurodevelopment disorders, childhood cancer, and endocrine disrupting effects. It is evident from this that children are a priority target group, and they are also the most vulnerable to environmental risks. Hence, we have made them the focus of our Strategy.
The substances selected are heavy metals, dioxins, PCBs and endocrine disrupters. Taking these diseases and substances as our starting point, we hope to develop a programme capable of providing us with the information we need on how the environment affects our health. We then hope to extend this to other environmental threats and related diseases."@en1
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