Kyprianou targets barriers to medical treatment abroad

The European Commission is preparing the first ever EU-wide health strategy to help patients looking for treatment outside their own member state.

A public consultation on the strategy ended last month. A summary report is expected before May and the Commission will follow this with a proposal before the end of the year.

A spokesman for Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou said: "In recent years, the EU has developed more and more activities aimed at improving the health of Europeans and the time has come to bring all these different actions together under one coherent strategic framework."

Governments and MEPs last year decided to exclude health from the scope of the services directive, which opens up EU services to cross-border competition. The Commission agreed to draw up a health strategy instead of legislation.

Kyprianou last week told the European Parliament’s environment, public health and food safety committee that the consultation had shown wide support for EU-level action in the field of health. He said that a Community strategy could improve co-operation between national healthcare systems and increase legal certainty for patients being treated outside their home country.

A spokesman for the environment committee warned there was confusion over whether the strategy would be under the responsibility of the health or internal market committees. German Socialist MEP Dagmar Roth-Behrendt is leading calls for the Commission to make it clear that healthcare, and not the internal market, is the strategy’s priority. The internal market committee had lead responsibility for the services directive in Parliament.

The European Public Health Alliance (EPHA) said that a strategy alone would not be enough to improve EU healthcare. The lobby group said that the EU would have to adopt a horizontal ‘health in all policies’ approach.

Anne Hoël of EPHA said: "That means impact assessments for every proposal - from audiovisual policy to transport legislation - should look into possible health impacts."

The European Commission is preparing the first ever EU-wide health strategy to help patients looking for treatment outside their own member state.