30 November Health Council

Date: 07/12/1995

HEALTH ministers agreed to a 27-million-ecu financial package aimed at stamping out drug abuse in the Union. The money, if agreed by the European Parliament, would be used to gather and evaluate data on drug use which is currently scattered across the bloc. The information, to be collected over a four-year period, would be used to develop more effective anti-drug strategies.

THE Spanish presidency failed to get agreement on a sensitive proposal to ban tobacco advertising in the EU. It had hoped to break the deadlock within the Council of Ministers by diluting the Commission's original proposal, but that hope was dashed as the two opposing camps remained firmly entrenched. Under the Spanish proposal, advertisements for tobacco products carried on radio broadcasts, in written publications and other cross-border media would have been banned. According to the European Commission, half a million people in the EU die every year from tobacco-related disease.

PUBLIC health may soon assume a more central position in EU policy, following a call by health ministers to include it in all European Commission legislative proposals. Ministers asked the Commission to review, without delay, all of its policy in the health area and to assess the impact of health protection on wider policy areas.

A STUDY must be carried out on whether prescriptions should be valid in EU countries other than the one in which they were written, health ministers have told the European Commission. Such a study should consider the dangers of misinterpretation of documents by pharmacists and of the fraudulent use of stolen prescriptions. Ministers also asked the Commission to look into problems related to the use of orphan or little-used drugs and to draw up a report on OECD policy on generic medicines.