Brussels, 07/07/2009 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission and member states are invited, for the post-2013 period, to review the EU's approach to financing in the field of public health. Other existing cooperation mechanisms, such as the open method of coordination, should be put to greater use. In a special report published on Tuesday 7 July, the European Court of Auditors thus expresses doubts about the effectiveness of the public health programme for the period 2003-2007 and formulates recommendations for the future.
The Public Health Programme (PHP) covered the period 2003 to 2007. Some 352 projects were financed over this period, with the Community contribution amounting to €231.7 million in commitment appropriations. It was structured around three programme strands: “health information”, rapid reaction to “health threats” and health promotion through addressing “health determinants”.
The Court's findings and conclusions were as follows: - the “PHP set very broad and ambitious objectives that contrasted sharply with the limited means at its disposal”. The Court recommends that focus be on what can actually be achieved. The intervention logic of the PHP was at no point made explicit, however, hence the difficulty in setting clear, meaningful and logically-linked objectives and specifying appropriate performance indicators. With few exceptions, projects did not define what results they intended to achieve, and therefore were unable to demonstrate that they had had any effect. Action areas in the various priority fields were not systematically the subject of monitoring, which sometimes entailed duplication. Projects generally had a European dimension and, in many cases, facilitated the sharing of experiences and mutual learning. Networks were the clearest providers of European added value.
As far as the current programme is concerned (the second Community action programme in the field of health for 2008-2013, which took effect on 1 January 2008), the Court recommends that the Commission undertake a mapping exercise to gain an overview of actions already implemented and thus to identify any remaining gaps. (L.C./transl.jl)