Welcome to the February 2006 edition of the EPHA Newsletter.
In mid December 2005, national governments reached an agreement on the EU budget for the period 2007-2013.
Despite the rhetoric from Heads of State that the Union’s objectives are enhancing prosperity, competitiveness, solidarity, cohesion and security, they ignored the critical link between healthy people and a healthy economy. They clearly decided NOT to equip the EU with the financial means to protect the health of their citizen. While other budget headings were allocated significant increases, heading 3b which includes the key programmes that are accessible and relevant for individual people: youth, culture, education, health and consumer policy, dialogue with citizens and the rapid response and preparatory instrument for major emergencies were significantly reduced.
However, there is still an opportunity to improve the situation.
The three EU institutions, the Council, Parliament and the Commission, have entered a negotiation phase (the "trialogue") to find a compromise agreement on the priorities for spending.
There is a need for policy makers at national and European level to make sure that the EU funding allocated to health and consumer issues is adequated. At the moment the funding for the Health and Consumer Programme is halved.
Difficult decisions will have to be made about what type of activities the EU can realistically undertake to promote public health. A wide range of projects and networks currently being supported at EU level are facing an uncertain future.
This month, EPHA will say goodbye to Francesco Longu. Francesco started working for EPHA in October 2002.
Francesco wrote many policy papers and worked on policy issues such as health and trade, Services, pharmaceuticals, patient and professional mobility.
Francesco was also the brain behind EPHA’s main communication tool: the website, and he implemented our switch to a full open source IT infrastructure.
Francesco will be missed and we all wish him all the best in his new projects!
Shivani Reddy and Milena Stoimenova finished their traineeship at EPHA in February. Also this month, Heide Weishaar, a German PhD student, joined EPHA for a two months research project.
Read all the online articles of our newsletter for February 2006
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