Belgium to block ‘weakened’ plan for monitoring diseases

Date: 29/05/1997

By Leyla Linton

BELGIUM will next week block agreement among health ministers on proposals for the monitoring of communicable diseases, claiming they have been watered down excessively by member states unwilling to give the European Commission too much power.

The amended plan for an epidemiological surveillance network does not have the Commission's support, which means it can only be adopted with the unanimous support of all 15 member states.

But the Belgian government has made it clear it will not go along with the proposals at next Wednesday's (5 June) meeting of health ministers.

“My minister is ready to oppose. We stand alone against all,” said a Belgian official.

Other EU countries were unhappy with the original plan, which would have given the Commission significant powers to decide upon and implement measures to deal with diseases including Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease, the Ebola virus and AIDS.

The Commission had suggested that member states should exchange information on potential epidemics and that it should be able to introduce control measures after consulting a committee of representatives from governments.

The Commission also wanted to be able to decide on methods of surveillance and issue recommendations to EU citizens.

The Commission's proposal was the most controversial in the health area since the entry into force of the Maastricht Treaty, which gave the Union powers to ensure a high level of human health protection for the first time.

The proposal now simply provides for a framework for information exchange, leaving it to member states to decide how to cooperate. “There are dangerous gaps in this watered-down proposal. We are not happy,” said a spokeswoman for Health Commissioner Padraig Flynn.

Although she acknowledged that the original scheme was ambitious, she pointed out that “diseases do not know any frontiers”.

A Belgian government official said that unless member states were forced to take coordinated action, there was little point in agreeing a proposal. “If there were an epidemic, each member state could take different measures. It happened when there was bubonic plague in India in 1993 and Antwerp closed its harbour to textiles from India, but Rotterdam did not. We think this is a silly way of acting.”