Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-02-10-Speech-2-041"
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"en.20040210.2.2-041"2
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"Mr President, my colleague, John Bowis, never lets us down. He not only nourishes our souls with the aphorism he chooses in each of his reports, but he also ensures that the report is clear, detailed and balanced. Such is the case this time too.
The agency for communicable diseases will be an immensely important body in the Union as infectious diseases have proved to be a major safety risk. With the enormous publicity they attract, they must be a significant factor in the insecurity the public feel. Bird flu has been a conspicuous topic of discussion recently, and AIDS is still unbeaten, to say nothing of older communicable diseases such as tuberculosis. Furthermore, the threat of bioterrorism is unfortunately a real one, as the anthrax letters we saw in 2001 showed.
Under the Treaties the EU has a clear obligation here, and there are functional reasons that reinforce it: joint action in the preservation of public health and prevention of disease is more effective. For that reason, the aim to start the work of the agency promptly next year is absolutely the right one, and the report by the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy is firmly in favour of this aim.
The regulation under discussion thus intends to establish the agency promised for Sweden in the package agreed at the European Council in December. I would hope the farce over the multiannual aspect of the decision on the package will later on mean there will be an amendment to the decision-making process; although the decision to establish the new agency is obviously governed by the requirement of consensus in the Council, such a detail as its geographical location should be decided by a majority. As far as the balance of competences of the Union and the Member States is concerned, only the former system has importance. The latter only gives rise to national chauvinism, and that should be curbed where possible by revising the decision-making structures."@en1
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