Susan Williams, European Officer for the Royal College of Nursing in the UK, says EPHA helps a national organisation like her own to find its way more easily through the "Euro Village".
The UK has traditionally kept itself on the fringes of European activity - like a reluctant bride not wanting to commit herself for good.
Strange perhaps that this attitude is not reflected in the voluntary and public sector. You only have to see the number of offices that UK organisations have opened in Brussels to realise that they have grasped the importance of EU decisions and their impact on our lives. But what do you do if, like the Royal College of Nursing UK, you don’t have a permanent presence in what we refer to as the "Euro Village" of Brussels?
You thank your lucky stars for organisations like EPHA!
Why EPHA?
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is a big organisation in nursing terms - the largest professional union of nurses in Europe. It has over 355,000 members and a considerable amount of influence in the UK over developments in the health sector. It knows how to work constructively with politicians, the media and the public to promote and develop nursing and health.
It has also learnt that at European level things operate differently.
First of all, health issues have a high profile in politics and the media domestically and are a clear concern of the public. But health is very low down in the pecking order in terms of EU priorities, resource allocation and capacity for action.
This is partly explained by the focus of EU health activity on "public health" and "health protection", which rarely excite decision makers or the press in the same way as headline grabbers such as patients waiting on trolleys because there are no hospital beds available.
Given that "health protection" is the main focus, nurses need to work with a broad range of partners to develop policy and lobby for change. The issue may be linked to the environment, to industry, to employment and not just of interest to health professionals. For example, the RCN has worked with manufacturers, suppliers and employers on preventing latex allergy and needlestick injuries and is debating the impact of health care provision on the environment at its annual congress this year.
Added to this, we have to keep an eye on a wide number of EU developments that may have an impact on health even though no one has realised it yet.
And finally, to raise the profile of health issues, or help shape EU policies and decisions, we know that to have a greater impact we need to promote ideas that are relevant to the whole of Europe, not just one country.
So whilst EPHA is neither the only European alliance in which the RCN is active, nor the one in which we have been involved for the longest, it is the one that can best address these four challenges faced by national organisations like ours.
Service with a smile
If you are a UK organisation with an interest in Europe, one of the most difficult things is to access information when you need it and not when the Commission or Parliament services finally decide to place it on some obscure part of the Europa website in an act of transparency. Another need is "intelligence" and a feel for what other organisations outside the UK think about a particular issue.
Over the last three or four years in particular, EPHA has developed an excellent and timely information service for its members - whether you want to find out who is going to be a rapporteur in the Parliament, which MEPs have spoken supporting an issue in committee and what they have said, or what the European Convention is up to on health or the deadlines for submissions on consultations or project funding - you get it all from EPHA, with a great deal of enthusiasm thrown in.
Making sense of it all
What you also get is analysis, particularly useful if you are confronted with a complex piece of legislation on pharmaceuticals, but also if you want some "horizon scanning". Increasingly, EPHA’s annual meetings have become an opportunity to be informed and to discuss with other members the key developments coming up over the following year - the EU Presidency priorities or the development of the Health Policy Forum, for example.
That MEPs, the Health Commissioner and senior Commission officials think it worth their while participating in these meetings indicates the level of credibility and influence which EPHA commands. They don’t come just for the sandwiches!!
Putting the members to work
How do you engage your members - particularly those who are not based in Brussels - to take an active part in policy making and lobbying? This is where EPHA has made the biggest strides recently. And the RCN, as a very large membership organisation itself, is only too acutely aware of how important this is and how difficult it is to achieve.
A very important milestone was EPHA’s membership consultation meeting in 2000 on the new health strategy for the EU, which is one of the Commission’s more readable and succinct documents. Since it set out the framework for activity for the next five years it was important for all EPHA members to understand it and have an opportunity to comment. The meeting not only gave us the chance to test out ideas with other members and to have our say on the focus of EPHA’s influential position paper "Creating a citizen-centred EU health policy", it also formed the basis for our discussions with key RCN members about what added value we wanted to see from an EU health strategy.
Since then there has been no stopping EPHA. It has developed e-mail working groups to which members can actively contribute - and even take the lead - so that EPHA can respond authoritatively to a wide range of EU proposals. For the RCN, it meant that we were able to agree a common approach on the proposed 6th framework research and development programme with other interested EPHA members and other organisations with whom EPHA works closely. But in relation to the EU pharmaceutical review, not a priority issue for our organisation, we knew that other EPHA members with greater interest and expertise than ourselves were collaborating. We could find out what was happening and tap into the group whenever we wanted to.
...and the "new improved" EPHA?
EPHA seems to survive on the commitment and dedication of a small team of people, but with an uncertain financial future. It would be great if EPHA and its members could find a long-term solution to put it on a firm financial footing.
The RCN is now working with key membership groups to develop greater awareness of the EU, how it operates and how nurses can achieve some influence, particularly their MEPs. EPHA has kindly contributed time to talk to these groups. And given that EPHA has many members not based in Brussels, and that accession will bring in many health organisations new to the EU, there is a role for EPHA to play in developing capacity amongst the membership. Resources permitting of course!!
As the agenda for health widens and our governments realise that they need to help shape the way the EU impacts on their health care services, perhaps EPHA should consider its focus for the future. Does "public health" need to be championed even more now at EU level before discussions on health care services grab the headlines and the resources, or should EPHA explicitly embrace a broader "health" agenda and develop policies that embrace both?
EPHA smoothes the way
Paul de Raeve of the Standing Committee of Nurses of the EU (PCN) says being a member of EPHA is important in all sorts of ways. "I’ll give you a recent example," he says. "When I was on a panel with Tamsin (EPHA General Secretary) recently we worked out in advance what each of us was going to say. She introduced the general issue so that I could follow putting our position into context. It makes it easier to put our message across clearly."
Info
Susan Williams, European Officer
Royal College of Nursing
20 Cavendish Square
London W1G 0RN, UK
Tel: +44 20 7647 3595
Fax: +44 20 7647 3422
E-mail: susan.williams@rcn.org.uk
Website: http://www.rcn.org.uk
