Newsletter February 2006

Future Presidencies of the Council of Ministers

This article will be updated with links to information about each presidency as it becomes available. TheCouncil of Ministers has confirmed the order of the half yearly rotating presidency until June 2020. Year January-June July-December 2006 Austria Finland 2007 Germany Portugal 2008 Slovenia France 2009 Czech Republic Sweden 2010 Spain Belgium 2011 Hungary Poland 2012 Denmark Cyprus 2013 (...)

Launch of a manual for national health platforms in Latvia

On 6 February 2006, EPHA launched the manual “Creating national Public health alliances in new member countries of the European Union” in Latvia. This event was organised as part of EPHA’s project, “Strengthening the development of national platforms on public health in new EU member states”, and in co-operation with the Civic Alliance Latvia. There were around 40 participants representing NGOs, public administration and the media. Lara Garrido-Herrero, (...)

Implementation of the tobacco advertising ban in Europe

*This article has been updated with information about the European Commission’s actions against Spain, Italy, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Germany*. Directive 2003/33/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 May 2003 on the approximation of the laws, regulations and administrative provisions of the Member States relating to the advertising and sponsorship of tobacco products, bans tobacco advertising in the print media, on radio and over the internet in Europe. It (...)

New Slovenian public health platform: the Slovene Coalition for Public Health

Following up EPHA capacity-building seminar in January 2005, the Slovene Coalition for Public Health was set up on December 2005 by Slovenian orgnaisations and officially registered on 25 August, 2006. Background On January 2005, EPHA in co-operation with the Centre for non-governmental organisation of Slovenia (CNVOS) organised a capacity building workshop “Towards a national public health platform in Slovenia”. Expert facilitators delivered training modules on the EU and (...)

Services directive: Agreement from the Council and the European Parliament to exclude healthcare services

The European institutions are to reach a compromise on the sensitive issue of services. Results of adoption by the European Parliament - February 2006 According to the text, the Directive will not apply to “healthcare, whether or not it is provided via healthcare facilities, and regardless of the ways in which it is organised and financed at national level or whether it is public or private”. The text takes on board the remarks made in the past months by the EU health (...)

February 2006 newsletter

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 (...)

Launch of the European Regional and local Health Authorities platform

On the 30 January 2006, the newly formed EUREGHA Network (EUropean REGional and local Health Authorities platform) was launched. The objective of the network is to improve coordinated policy communication between EU institutions and regional and local authorities working on health issues. As regional and local authorities are increasingly affected by health initiatives and have more and more responsabilities in the field, EUREGHA intends to build an administrative regional and local (...)

Secretariat News February 2006

Events that EPHA attended Francesco attended a meeting of the EMEA/CHMP Working Group with Patients’ & Consumers’ Organisations in London on 15 February. He also attended the collaborators meeting for Public Health News magazine in London one week later. Reports from both events are available for members in the members only area. Francesco also attended the launch of the YSAFE network, as part of the SAFE project. Agnese attended a meeting at the Latvian Health Promotion (...)

European Baseline Mental Health Conference, Budapest 22-23 March 2006

A major international conference on mental health was held in Budapest in March 2006. This conference is part of the project Implementation of Mental Health Promotion Policies and Strategies in EU Member States and Accession countries (EMIP), of which EPHA is a partner. The project is coordinated by the Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health - FIOSH/BAuA (Germany). The goal of EMIP is to provide national partners and the wider EU membership with opportunities, resources, (...)

2006 Call for proposals in the field of Public Health

The European Commission has launched the 2006 Call for proposals for projects to be funded through the EU public Health Programme. This follows the adoption of the 2006 Work plan which sets out the priorities for this year. The deadline for submission of proposals is 19 May 2006. A budget of € 43 million has been set aside for the call and projects shall not exceed three years. An Information Day for potential project submitters covering the implementation of the Public Health (...)