Newsletter August 2004

August 2004 newsletter

Welcome to the August 2004 edition of the EPHA newsletter.
In mid August, incoming Commission President Barroso surprised everyone by announcing the Commissioner portfolios a fortnight earlier than scheduled. A new post of Vice-President with responsibility for communication with citizens has been created and this role will be filled by Mrs Wallstrom, former environment Commissioner.
The portfolio of Health and Consumer Affairs has been left unchanged as one job which has been allocated (...)

Included in Society: Conference on community-based residential services for people with disabilities

The final conference of the project Included in Society will be held in Brussels at the Bedford Hotel on 22 - 23 October 2004.
The project has analysed the conditions in and prevalence of large residential institutions for disabled people in Europe. At its final conference, the project partners want to discuss their findings and policy recommendations with international specialists on residential care and deinstitutionalisation issues, as well as with policy decision makers and other (...)

Commission consultation on nanotechnology

The Commission is launching a wide consultation on its Communication Towards a European Strategy for Nanotechnology in which it proposed an integrated and responsible approach for developing nanosciences and nanotechnologies in Europe.
Nanotechnology is a new approach to research and development for controlling the fundamental structure and behaviour of matter at the level of atoms and molecules. Applications are emerging in many different areas such as health care, information (...)

A new guide to green procurement in Europe

The European Commission has produced a Handbook on Green Public Procurement.
It explains in clear, non-technical terms how public purchasers, such as schools, hospitals and national and local administrations, can take into account the environment when buying goods, services and works.
Each year public authorities spend some 16% of EU GDP, around 1,500 billion Euro, on goods, services and works. If they opt for environmentally sound goods, services and works, they will help the EU reach (...)

Poverty and health in developing countries: EU and WHO to cooperate closely

A new report by the WHO and UNICEF warns that vicious cycle of ill-health and poverty could defeat human development efforts, with children the first to suffer.
More than 2.6 billion people - over 40 per cent of the world’s population - do not have access to basic sanitation, and more than one billion people still use unsafe sources of drinking water
Entitled Meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) drinking water and sanitation target - A mid-term assessment of progress, the report (...)

EU ministers address HIV/AIDS threat in Europe

EU health ministers and AIDS experts from across the EU met in Vilnius, Lithuania on 16-17 September 2004 for a conference entitled Europe and HIV/AIDS: New Challenges, New Opportunities. It was organised jointly by the Lithuanian government and the European Commission and followed up on the Ministerial Conference on HIV/AIDS of 23-24 February this year during the Irish Presidency of the EU (see related EPHA’s article).
The main outcome of the conference was the adoption of a (...)

New Commission portfolios announced

President-designate of the European Commission, Mr Jose Manuel Barroso has announced the policy portfolios allocated to his team of Commissioners.
Innovations
All Commissioners under one roof at the Berlaymont building
New post Vice-President for institutional relations and communication strategy - Mrs Margot Wallstrom
A Vice President for Competitiveness - Mr Gunter Verheugen
5 Vice-Presidents but all Commissioners equal in decision-making
More informal brainstorming sessions and (...)

EU funding for research on "New and Emerging Risks" available

NEST INSIGHT is a new research funding initiative of the 6th European Union’s Research Framework Programme (FP6). NEST INSIGHT aims at research to assess rapidly new discoveries, or newly observed phenomena, which may indicate new hazards, emerging risks or problems of high importance to European society, and identify appropriate responses to them. INSIGHT projects are science-driven investigations with an anticipatory function. They are evaluated and selected only according to the (...)

New Commissioners nominated

With the Dutch appointment of 3 August, all EU governments have already proposed their commissioners-to-be for the next five years. The full list of the nominees is attached below.
Most of the future commissioners are high-ranking politicians including three former prime ministers, three finance ministers and four ministers of foreign affairs. The new Commission will also contain a record number of females. Eight out of 25 nominees are women, accounting for one third of Mr Barosso’s team. (...)

On line consultation on the future development of the European policy on freedom, security and justice

The European Commission is organising a consultation on line on the future development of the European policy on freedom, security and justice.
The progressive establishment of the area of freedom, security and justice was a new objective set for the European Union by the Treaty of Amsterdam. The Tampere European Council in October 1999 placed this objective at the head of the Union’s political agenda and set a very ambitious programme. The programme set out policy guidelines and practical (...)

Food and nutrition on the European agenda

DG SANCO has established a new Advisory Group on the food chain. The new group will bring together key stakeholders including farmers, the food industry, retailers, consumer organisations and others to advise the European Commission on food safety policy. It will meet at least twice a year and consist of up to 45 members from EU-level associations. Reflecting the Commission’s "farm to fork" approach to food safety, the group will be consulted on matters ranging from policy on pesticides (...)

EU and US Laws on food labelling for common allergens

The Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act (FALCPA) has been adopted by the US Government and will come into force on 1 January 2006. It is designed to help consumers to easily identify safe and unsafe foods.
The Act requires food labels to identify in plain English if the product contains any of the eight major food allergens responsible for over 90% of all allergic reactions- milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, peanuts, tree nuts, wheat and soybeans. The law covers all (...)

"Towards High Performing Health Systems" report

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has published a report titled "Towards high-performing health systems" which offers a synthesis of findings from recent OECD studies undertaken as part of the three-year Health Project.
It provides information and analysis on a wide variety of topics, such as new and emerging health-related technologies, long-term care, private health insurance, health-care cost control, equity of access across income groups, health workforce (...)

EU initatives for road safety

The European Commission’s Group of experts on accidents in the transport sector held its first plenary session on 14 July 2004.
The group, which will advise the Commission on its transport safety strategy, was created in June 2003 and has 12 appointed members, out of 100 candidates from across Europe.
During the first plenary session, the group has given itself a mandate defining the aspects falling into its remit. It has set up five working groups to cover the four sectors of transport (...)

New WHO training scheme for public health leaders

The World Health Organization has launched a new initiative, the Health Leadership Scheme (HLS) to train the next generation of health leaders.
The WHO will recruit young health professionals to a two-year work and training programme, specifically aimed at strengthening the knowledge and skills essential for leadership roles in public health at all levels - national, regional and global. A grant of US$ 5 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provides funding for this programme (...)

ESIP position paper on "Services in the Internal Market"

The European Social Insurance Partners (ESIP) recently published a joint position paper regarding the proposal from the European Commission for a directive about "Services in the Internal Market" of 13 January 2004.
In the opinion of the European Social Insurance Partners, the proposed Directive should be subject to critical review, so that
it is more in line with national social systems, whose design is a matter entirely for the member states to decide, and
it fits in better with the (...)

Open Consultation on Draft Technical Requirements for Tissues and Cells

The European Parliament and of the Council adopted in March 2004 Directive 2004/23/EC that sets standards of quality and safety for the donation, procurement, testing, processing, preservation, storage and distribution of human tissues and cells. This entered into force on 7 April 2004.
The Directive empowers the Commission to establish and update technical requirements in relation to quality and safety of human Tissues and cells. In anticipation of its responsibilities under this (...)

WTO ¨July deal¨ heavily criticised

The WTO’s 147 member governments approved on 1 August 2004 a package of framework and other agreements on the Doha Agenda work programme. In WTO’s words, the package is ’designed to focus the negotiations and raise them to a new level’.
The package deals with a number of ¨hot¨ topics such as agriculture, cotton, non-agricultural market access (NAMA), special and differential treatment (SDT), development and trade in services.
The package is the result of long-lasting negotiations by five (...)