Brussels, 25/10/2005 (Agence Europe) - The new European Group on Ethics (EGE) held its constitutive meeting on 25 October, at which it elected its president and vice president. Göran Hermeren of Sweden remains president of the group, which elected Paula Martinho da Silva of Portugal as its vice president. During this, its third mandate of four years (2005-2009), the EGE will continue to provide the European Commission with opinions on ethical issues. It may also respond to requests from other institutions, such as the Parliament, under certain circumstances, and take an autonomous decision to work on any given subject. Among the forthcoming opinions anticipated features of the use of nanotechnology in human medicine
For its third mandate, the group has grown in size from 12 to 15 members. Out of this total, the president of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso has taken the decision to re-appoint six members of the previous group: the Swedish philosopher Göran Hermeren, the Danish lawyer Linda Nielsen, the Spanish biologist Pere Puigdomenech Rosell, the German professor of management and information ethics Rafael Capurro, the Dutch professor of healthcare ethics Inez de Beaufort, and the Austrian theologian Günter Virt. Nine additional members join the group: the Italian lawyer Carlo Casini (Pontifical University of Rome), the Portuguese lawyer Paula Martinho da Silva, who is also the president of the National Ethics Council of Portugal, the Hungarian food safety specialist Diana Banati, the French geneticist Anne Cambon-Thomsen, the Slovakian professor of clinical pharmacology and hepatology Jozef Glasa, the British professor of biotechnology law Julian Kinderlerer, the Polish renal physiologist Krzysztof Marczewski, the Maltese theologian Emmanuel Agius and the German theologian Hille Haker (Goethe University, Frankfurt).