Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-02-13-Speech-2-283"
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"en.20010213.12.2-283"2
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"Mr President, in 1999, the turnover in the European Union for vitamins and minerals alone was over EUR 1 600 million, even without taking other food supplements into account. That just shows how fashionable these products have become, which is quite natural, when all is said and done. The wish to be and to stay healthy is probably the most widely shared one. Every day, then, millions of European citizens take thousands of pills, capsules and tablets. It also shows how urgent is the need for regulation of this market in Europe, a market which is expanding rapidly, lacks transparency, and, above all, varies greatly from one Member State to another, as has been noted. The differences are sometimes quite considerable and concern areas such as product composition, dosage, and criteria relating to purity, labelling or the required approval procedure.
We must, therefore, fill these gaps so that we can protect consumers, so that they are extremely well briefed and as clearly informed as is possible, while enabling the free movement of goods within the European Union, as, I am sure, everyone will agree. When voting on Mrs Müller’s excellent report, on which we must congratulate her, the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy included vitamins and minerals in the definition of food supplements, as well as other substances listed in the annexes. We welcome this contribution. Our aim was to ensure that, in the long term, the directive would cover all the food supplements already on the European market, so that European consumers can enjoy the same safety guarantees.
In the same spirit, our group tabled three additional amendments, Amendments Nos 33, 34 and 35. Amendments with the same effect were also tabled by the Group of the Party of European Socialists, seeking to ensure that the scope of the directive includes substances that have physiological effects, i.e. non-nutritional substances which are nonetheless vital to a person’s well-being. Fibre, which is known to aid digestion, in the same way as plant extracts, is included. I would like to point out that this proposal was already included in the text of the French Presidency and is currently in that of the Swedish Presidency. The very reason that we are here today is to create a legal framework in order to harmonise the sale of these food supplements.
We should not create a legal void in Europe with regard to ingredients which have physiological functions. There are millions of consumers who would find that incomprehensible."@en1
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