Sanco celebrates its 10th birthday

The meeting and dinner were attended by two previous Commissioners, many former senior Sanco staff and the two current Commissioners and their senior staff. Notably, the organisers had decided to place the representatives of stakeholders at the forefront of events – the stakeholders present were Monika Kosinska from EPHA, Monique Goyens, the Director General of the Consumers’ Organisation (BEUC) and Mella Frewen the Director General of the Confederation of the Food and Drink Industry. The high-level event also had present a delegation from the Stakeholder Dialogue Group which included EPHA member and former EPHA Vice-President Florence Berteletti-Kemp, Director of the Smokefree Partnership.

The participants in the seminar were welcomed by Robert Madelin, Director General of DG Health and Consumers. He introduced the Moderator of the morning, journalist Geoff Meade.

"Debate Europe"

Jim Murray. former Director of BEUC introduced the morning with a summary of the questions and issues posed by citizens on the Commission’s ’Debate Europe’ site. The most popular topic discussed on the forum so far is cross-border care, with citizens. Another popular thread was on the cost of eating healthily, with participants complaining that food prices are too high to allow people to make healthy food choices.

Most vulnerable need to be addressed

EPHA’s Monika Kosinska, started the discussions on health with a five-minute’stakeholder statement’:

"Health is a challenging portfolio as it is hard to measure - the absence of disease and lives not lost are not ’pipedreams’ but are concrete outcomes that we as the health community need to become better at measuring and communicating. Too often the role of health policy is to clean up the mistakes of others."

"We need to recognise and celebrate the progress that DG Sanco has made over the last 10 years. There are too many to list in my short five minutes, but it is impossible to ignore the leaps in the fight against tobacco. Secondly, this week’s Communication on Health Inequalities marks a watershed moment in European policy - I worked on health inequalities under the UK Presidency, where it was a challenge to have all EU Member States recognising health inequalities as an issue. In four short years, we have a pan-European strategy on health inequalities not only within, but also between Member States."

"Sanco faces many challenges as it moves into its second decade. Firstly to ensure its policies are made for those who need them most - whether food labeling, patient rights or alcohol policy, it is the most vulnerable that need to be addressed and not the average citizen."

"But the biggest challenge lies not within Sanco, but from your Commission colleagues. As we in this room know, it is not health officials who determine health outcomes - it is your colleagues in industry, agriculture and trade. Most of all it is the framework of your institutions - the better regulation agenda and impact assessments particular - which disfavours policies, like health, whose outcomes are that much harder to measure."

"The second biggest challenge is Europe’s business plan itself - the next Lisbon Strategy. If we do not measure our progress properly, then we go forward blindly. If we are not starting off with the right framework, then how will we know where we end up? And how can we ensure that we are measuring those things that matter most? More and more we see that GDP is not enough."

"I am sure that many people around this table much more experienced than I, are shaking their heads and muttering something about ’competence’. But that is my challenge to you; I look to DG Sanco for leadership, vision, creativity and most of all, courage."

"Finally, as Sanco leaves behind its childhood and enters its teenage years, we look forward to it behaving like all good teenagers should - challenging authority, pushing back its boundaries and growing into the strong and powerful adult we need to meet the challenges ahead."

Extracts from the speech from Commissioner Vassiliou

Before the discussion was opened to the floor, the Commissioner for Health, Androulla Vassiliou, addressed the seminar with an overview of the tasks ahead including that economic recovery cannot disregard the challenges of the ageing population, the inequalities in health status and health care, and the rapid pace of technological development and market innovation (GMOs, nanotechnology, cloning, climate change etc...):

"We cannot talk about the future of our health’s systems without mentioning the development of health technologies. Technology, including developments in medicine, has saved life’s. But at the same time, these innovations can frequently make health care more efficient. A good example of this is undoubtedly e-health. And I think we should try to make e-health a reality across Europe."

"Prevention is always better than cure, we say. And I doubt this is recognised and realised by governments. Because a very very small percentage of their GDPs is spent on preventive measures. They are always looking at short-term results. This is very political. And we know that preventive measures will show results in 10-15-20 years. So we have to, I think, encourage Member States to spend more on this."

"A lot of people around this table will agree that we have to pay more attention to fighting health determinacy. Obesity is becoming a big problem; lack of physical exercise; tobacco is still a big problem, - hopefully it will not grow any more but it will be reduced; mental health. So we have to fight all these health determinants."

"I said it from the very beginning, when I took over as Commissioner, that we have to involve young people. Because if we want to change the way of life, our habits, we cannot do it with my generation. We can only hope to be successful by building up this new way of life from the young generation."

Open debate

The health part of the morning included forty minutes of comments and questions from the participants, which included former Commissioners David Byrne and Emma Bonino, former Directors General Robert Coleman and Spyros Pappas. Topics ranged from anti-biotic resistance to the recent Stiglitz report on the Measurement of Economic Progress and Social Progress. EPHA member, Florence Berteletti-Kemp urged DG Sanco to lead its colleagues in setting new thinking about how we measure our progress, and offered the concrete example of Commission impact assessment tools, which fail to take health and well-being into consideration.

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