Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-03-16-Speech-4-023"
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"en.20060316.5.4-023"2
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".
Mr President, firstly I want to join those who are congratulating Mr Trakatellis for his work and for the open and cooperative way in which he has conducted the drafting of this report.
We all know that the EU has limited powers and limited resources, maybe even smaller resources than we would hope, to carry out work in field of health. It is, therefore, important that we focus our work on areas where the EU can add value and make a real difference. That is why the PSE Group has tried to ensure that we have real focus in the health programme.
We need a health programme that forms part of a health strategy for the European Union. At the moment we have a lot of ad-hoc initiatives, often coming from Presidencies, on this or that condition. That is not good enough: we need a strategy and we need to define what the strategy should cover. For my part I say it should include trans-border health threats; we have heard about those, we know about the flu pandemic. Secondly, it should include patient health mobility issues: with more and more people travelling, we have got to get the health card right. I get a lot of casework from people who still have problems with their health card. Then there are people travelling, who want health care abroad with the E112. We have to stop letting the Court make the rules about healthcare; the legislators have to make the healthcare rules. Thirdly, there is the area of cooperation, of exchange of good practice on tackling health determinants. As Mr Trakatellis said, that is extremely important. We get a lot of lobbying on this from organisations asking us to include in the programme actions on one or other disease or condition. The PSE Group does not support including a list of conditions in the report, because we feel we should be focusing on the health determinants. We do not want to create a hierarchy of diseases and conditions, because many of these diseases and conditions are terrible for those who have them.
Keeping this sharp focus on health in the health programme is not going to be easy. We need only look at the number of amendments tabled for plenary – nearly 200 – and at the many competing demands that are being made. However, unless we have focus in the programme, unless we can show that the EU is adding value and not just making a series of declarations at summits or conferences, it will be very difficult to convince the Council and the public of the need for an increased budget.
So, it is over to the Commission. I hope it will come forward with a health strategy, I hope we will have focus in a future health programme. We will be voting for Amendment 64; we think it is very important to send a signal that healthcare matters. We know the public is sceptical about Europe, but if people see us acting on things they care about, they might feel friendlier towards Europe.
I very much hope we will defend a good budget but also keep an eye on focus in the programme."@en1
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