Public health: integration of health protection requirements in Community policies. 2nd report 1995

In adopting the report by Mrs Marialiese FLEMMING (PPE, A) on the integration of health protection requirements in Community policies, Parliament welcomed the numerous aspects of the Commission report on this subject but regretted the fact that the Commission's statements concerning the internal market, agriculture and foodstuffs remained general and incomplete. It called on the Commission to continue to present an annual report on health and to step up health protection requirements, particularly in food legislation. Parliament called, inter alia, for: - the ban on the use of growth hormones in livestock farming to be continued, - the same health requirements to be applied to imported foodstuffs as to Community products, - greater freedom of movement for doctors, - enhancement of patients' rights, particularly by means of the submission of a study of national provisions for compensation in the event of medical errors, - adoption of more stringent legislation in the nuclear field, - a communication on the situation regarding products containing vitamins and mineral salts in the Union, - special preventive health measures concerning older workers to ensure that they were not prematurely forced out of gainful employment, - a higher level of protection than that permitted by Codex alimentarius recommendations. On the subject of tobacco, Parliament considered that both the ideas put forward by the Agriculture Council, with the aim of reducing aid for quantity, and the subsidies for the conversion of tobacco growing would contribute to better health protection. It urged the Commission to put forward a reform plan for the tobacco industry taking account of the harm done to human health by tobacco consumption, but did not endorse the rapporteur's proposal that, as a long-term objective, support for tobacco growing in Europe should be abolished within ten years at most. Parliament called on the Council to adopt a more constructive approach to the role of the Union in the field of public health cooperation, and on the Commission, when drawing up the preliminary draft budget for 1999, to take account of the growing importance of public health at European level. In this connection, it called on the Commission to submit a report on the future of health policy after Amsterdam. �