The Parliament

Parliament’s health committee has called on the Commission to set up an EU Cancer Task Force to provide leadership for improved prevention, screening and treatment of the disease in Europe.
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/compa...
Background
Cancer remains one of the biggest causes of death in Europe. Although enormous efforts are being made in the area of research and significant advances have been made in the fight against this scourge - medicine is currently able to cure one cancer in two (...)

MEPs looking into how to overhaul the workings of the European Parliament have raised concerns about the number of quick deals that are reached on EU laws.
EPHA believes that such behaviours could risk resulting in poor quality legislation and that the process is not sufficiently transparent.
Background
In 2007, the President of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Poettering, set up a special working group on parliamentary reform. It was chaired by Dagmar Roth-Behrendt MEP and was to improve (...)

On Tuesday 15 January 2008, MEPs debated how to strengthen a European Strategy to protect the rights of children. The Parliament called for tougher measures to combat paedophilia on the Internet as well as to tackle child sex tourism and child labour.
European Parliamentarians in plenary session adopted the Roberta Angelilli report on the Commission’s Communication "Towards an EU Strategy on the Rights of the Child".
The strategy calls for children’s rights to be mainstreamed in all (...)

The European Parliament adopted a written declaration that addresses the need for a comprehensive strategy to fight cancer so that it will no longer be the leading cause of death in Europe.
The written declaration has been signed by more than half of the MEPs, which is the required number for a declaration to be adopted. In addition to cancer being the leading cause of death in Europe, one-third of all cancers are preventable and can be detected early and successfully treated.
The (...)

On 5 September 2007 the European Parliament adopted an amended report on the EU alcohol strategy to support Member States in reducing alcohol-related harm.
The report raises several issues including: labelling and warnings, binge-drinking, alcopops and reducing accidents caused by drinking and driving. The report was adopted by a large majority. To read the full dossier look at EPHA’s website.
EPHA welcomes that the rapporteur, Alessandro Foglietta, highlighted some of the important (...)

The European Ombudsman, P. Nikiforos Diamandouros, launched an information campaign to organisations with a registered office in the EU, about their right to complain to the Ombudsman on 7 June 2007.
The campaign is directed to NGO’s, associations, companies, regional offices, schools and universities. The Ombudsman information sheet explains to these organisations how the Ombudsman can help settle problems with the EU administration, giving the following information:
What can you complain (...)

In October 2006, the European Parliament voted in favour of a new Breast Cancer Resolution demanding effective implementation of breast cancer services in all EU Member States.
Three years earlier, in 2003 the European Parliament voted on a resolution on breast cancer which called, amongst other things, for:
A 25% reduction in the average breast-cancer mortality rate and a 5% reduction in inequalities between Member States
Accession countries to increase efforts to fight breast cancer (...)

European Parliamentarians are considering creating regular ’agoras’, or fora for citizens to debate draft laws, in an effort to bring citizens closer to the EU.
The move follows rejection of Europe’s proposed Constitutional Treaty in 2005. The push for ’agoras’ was initiated by the parliament’s vice president, French Green MEP Gerard Onesta.
Under his proposal, the parliament would organise five or six fora per year, with a total of 1,800 participants discussing current legislative issues. (...)

*Latest update: adoption by the European Parliament of David Hammerstein Mintz report calling to increase Council transparency*
The decision-making process in the European Council is often seen as not being transparent. The European Parliament, the European Ombudsman and the Civil Society Contact Group are acting to end secrecy and lack of transparency in the European Council decision-making processes.
The European Parliament campaign MEPs Chris Davies, Nigel Farage, Timothy Kirkhope, Jean (...)

Five MEPs (Robert Navarro FR PES, Jean-Luc Bennahmias FR Greens/EFA, Rodi Kratsa-Tsagaropoulou FR EPP-ED, Luigi Cocilovo IT ALDE and Sylvia-Yvonne Kaufmann FR GUE ) have presented a written declaration on the statute for a European association and the promotion of an active European citizenship.
If this declaration collects the signatures of half of European Parliament’s representatives, it will become a Parliament official position. This initiative comes timely with the debates on the Plan (...)