Public health: Community action programme 1997-2001 on health monitoring

In its common position, the Council made a series of changes to the text of the Commission proposal, while adhering to the same general approach (particularly as regards the substance of the programme as shown in Annex I to the decision). The main changes concerned: -the financial framework: slightly less than proposed by the Commission (ECU 13 m rather than 13.8 m), -commitology: a joint committee, proceeding as a regulatory committee when taking important decisions and as an advisory committee in other cases (including when deciding details of coordination), -data protection: the arrangements must comply with existing provisions on data protection, -the objective of the programme: the programme must have the aim of assessing health status, trends and determinants in the Community, facilitating the planning and monitoring of Community measures and providing Member States with health information such as to enable comparisons to be carried out, -consistency and complementarity with other Community measures, -international cooperation (particularly with international health organizations), -monitoring and evaluation of the programme with a view to its possible continuation, -systematic collection of data to make health data comparable (extension and improvement of the formulation in the Commission proposal). As regards the fate of the EP's amendments, the Council accepted the essential points of the amendments adopted by the EP at first reading and incorporated in the amended proposal. However, it did not accept the amendments concerning: .cooperation between the fields of health and occupational health and safety, .setting-up of a permanent monitoring body (particularly in the form of a European health observatory), .measures to prevent duplication of effort in the forwarding of data, .excessively strict measures regarding the confidentiality and security of data. It did however incorporate Parliament's amendments concerning the critical analysis of health indicators and budgetary provisions, which had not been accepted by the Commission.�