Public health and consumer policy aspects of enlargement

The European Parliament, bearing in mind the contribution from the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy, calls on the Commission to work closely with the candidate countries and the WHO Europe Office to monitor progress towards physical, mental, neurological and environmental health reforms and towards meeting the broad acquis communautaire relating to health and to encourage the development of statistics and outcome measurements so that individual countries can be more accurately compared. The Parliament calls on the candidate countries to develop health systems safeguarding those basic elements which characterise all EU Member States. Special attention must be paid to enhance health education and family planning. With regard to consumer policy, the Parliament calls on the candidate countries to improve the implementation of this policy and, in particular, to institute effective consultation mechanisms, to resolve the problem of support to consumer NGOs and to encourage efforts for education in schools and information of the population regarding consumer rights and obligations. Special attention should be paid to issues concerning Community-wide regulation on food safety and nutrition, telecommunications services, financial services and product safety.�