Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-04-27-Speech-3-092"
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".
Honourable Members, I should firstly like to thank Mr Cabrnoch and his colleagues for this report. It contains a great many proposals and recommendations, and the Commission will pay due attention to all of them. I was particularly glad to see that the report argues in favour of stepping up cooperation in order to improve health and long-term care for senior citizens in the Member States, and that it takes the open method of coordination as its basis.
At the end of this year, the Commission will adopt a communication setting out proposals aimed at rationalising and simplifying the open method of coordination in the field of social protection. As noted in paragraph 32 of the report, these proposals will cover health and long-term care, as well as social integration and pensions. We regard health care as one of the key aspects of the strategies to be developed by the Member States over the next few years with a view to solving the problem of demographic ageing whilst maintaining a high level of social protection.
Your report has therefore come at a very opportune time, and will be of great help to us in drafting these proposals. The same is true for the national reports on health and long-term care that we are in the process of receiving from the Member States. A crucial part of our work schedule will be to identify opportunities for interaction with the current and future European public health strategies and with the relevant Community action programme. Both Commissioner Kyprianou and myself and our departments will continue to cooperate closely to this end. At the same time, of course, we will not lose sight of the fact that the Member States bear the primary responsibility for health and long-term care, and that the European Union’s job is to support political bodies with decision-making powers at national level.
Your report discusses a wide range of issues relating to social protection and public health, as well as those relating to the free movement of persons and services on the internal market. All these fundamental issues must be addressed using the appropriate instruments, which include the legislative powers we hold with regard to the internal market and freedom of movement, as well as the action programme for public health and the open method of coordination.
The Commission will seek to ensure maximum coherence between these individual instruments, whilst at the same time continuing to promote an integrated understanding of health care in terms of efforts to provide appropriate and fair health care to all citizens, whether in their own countries or in other EU Member States.
Honourable Members, this is an extremely wide-ranging and thorough report, and I should merely like to comment on one of its paragraphs. According to paragraph 7, Parliament regrets that the Commission views the modernisation of social protection with regard to health care essentially in terms of the requirements of the Stability Pact. In my opinion, this is not entirely accurate. Mr Cabrnoch has already said that the threefold aim of accessibility, quality and long-term financial sustainability lies at the heart of all debates on modernisation. This means that although long-term financial sustainability is of considerable importance, it is not the only guiding principle for all of our decisions.
As I said at the start of my speech, this report has come at a very opportune time, and the points covered in it are such that we will undoubtedly give consideration to them in our future work. I thank you."@en1
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