The health community must seize the opportunity of the treaty reform to put health in its rightful place at the heart of the European Union.
This means ensuring that public health is included as an objective of the EU (new Article 3) and as a shared competence (new Article 12) between the EU and the Member States.
The current legal basis for public health in the EU is the Amsterdam Treaty, signed in 1997. Article 152 states that the EU will ensure a ’high level of health protection in all community policies’ but this has not been translated into a systematic mainstreaming of health into all EU policies.
This limited legal competence has prevented the development of an integrated health strategy that would link health promotion into core EU policies such as development, environment, social protection, trade and enterprise policy.
The documents below will give you an insight of our advocacy work towards the Convention in the past months.
