Brussels, 19/12/2007 (Agence Europe) - After months of prevarication and a particularly laborious editing of a draft directive on cross-border health services, the European Commission again postponed (on Wednesday 19 December) a dossier that had been troubling the College and definitively pulling apart the image of consensus that the institution had been attempting to present to the outside world. Officially, the postponement is obviously down to the timetable and the impossibility of the College tackling the dossier at the same time as the one on car emissions. At the request of president José Manuel Barroso, the dossier has therefore been postponed till January, in the hope that the festive cheer will smooth over the uncertainties of different Commissioners, those long-held by Charlie McCreevy and Vladimir Spidla (EUROPE 9552) or those more recently of Margot Wallström and Peter Mandelson. Meanwhile, it appears that Markos Kyprianou, the Commissioner for health is particularly bogged down in an unmanageable communication. Andreas Schwab MEP (Social Democrat, Germany) said that the Commission's communication policy is an affront to the European Parliament. The MEP is particularly critical of the Commissioner's participation at the parliamentary health committee, where the draft was significantly changed around. (O.J.)