Luxembourg, 05/06/2001 (Agence Europe) - The EU health ministers, who met on Tuesday in Luxembourg under the chairmanship of Lars Engqvist, adopted a common position on the new Community action programme on public health (2001-2006). The text, which will now be the subject of a second reading at the European Parliament, remains, however, quite far from what MEPs had hoped and could therefore lead to conciliation procedure.
The Council did not follow the Parliament which had called for the creation of a structured network for epidemiological surveillance in the European Union. It accepts the creation of a network but states that it should have "appropriate structures", an ambiguous formula that is to the liking of France which hoped to give "visibility" to this network while avoiding upsetting the Member States or the Commission. The Commission did not wish for a strong structure likely to become a Union agency in time. The Council made a downward revision of the budget of the new programme which must, over six years, replace the eight sector-specific programmes that currently exist in the health sector. We recall that the Parliament had increased to EUR 380 million the budget to which the Commission proposal had allocated 300 million. Given the opposition of four Member States (United Kingdom, Netherlands, Germany and Sweden), that did not wish to exceed EUR 260 million, the Council finally unanimously approved the sum of EUR 280 million. During the final press conference, Commissioner David Byrne welcomed the adoption of this common position while stressing the financial gap between the Council text, the initial Commission proposal and, also, the first reading of the Parliament. Recalling that enlargement should come before 2006, he stressed that the first wave of accessions should entail an increase in the programme's budget.
Ministers also adopted a recommendation on the consumption of alcohol by young people as well as conclusions relating to a common strategy on alcohol (on these two texts, see EUROPE of Saturday last). During the press conference, Mr Engqvist said that there has been a transformation in the way of conceiving alcohol policy under Swedish Presidency. "Hitherto, alcohol had mainly been treated as a question coming under the internal market or agriculture policy. All Member States now agree to consider alcohol as a public health matter", he added.
Commissioner Byrne presented to the Council, as planned, the state of negotiations on tobacco at the WHO, as well as the new proposal of directive aimed at banning tobacco advertising. While stating that he had not heard the reaction of Germany ("no news, good news", he said with a smile), he repeated that the proposal is not to be challenged as it follows the Court's ruling to the letter, a ruling that had cancelled the previous proposal. Spain, supported by several other Member States, proposed to remove tobacco from the consumer price index in order to be able to put up tobacco prices without this having an influence on inflation. Stressing that most smokers begin young (90% begin smoking before the age of 18 and 80% before the age of 16), Mr Byrne urged, during the press conference, for tobacco prices to be put up.
During lunch, the Union ministers discussed with the health ministers of the candidate countries the possibilities for working together in order to reduce drugs consumption among the young.