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

In its opinion on the Council's common position, the Commission pointed out that it was unable to agree with the Council's text for the following reasons: - budgetary allocation (ECU 13 million instead of ECU 13.8 million proposed by the Commission): the Commission felt that its proposal was within the ceilings provided for in the budget and was relatively modest given the scope of the programme; - comitology: under the procedure recommended by the Council (joint committee), the committee would proceed as a regulatory committee on nine matters and as an advisory committee in all other cases; the Commission felt that this approach was overly bureaucratic and cumbersome and preferred a solely advisory committee; - assessment: the Commission regretted that the assessment of the programme would be used as a basis for recommending whether or not the programme should continue (thereby contradicting the Commission's right of initiative), - comparability of data: the Commission regretted that the term "gradually harmonized data" had been deleted in favour of "comparable" data. It also recalled that numerous amendments by the European Parliament had been rejected by the Council.�