Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-06-07-Speech-2-054-000"
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"en.20110607.6.2-054-000"2
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"Mr President, I would like to thank you and also all the Members who contributed to this debate. I will not have time to react to every single interesting comment that was made, but I can assure you we have taken note of the feeling expressed in this House. Today, as I said, I will be attending the Council of Agriculture Ministers. Tomorrow, I will be in Berlin to participate in a coordination meeting between the food safety sector and the health sector, together with the experts we have in place there.
My main preoccupation is to stop hospitalisations: that is my first and foremost objective. I am concentrating on mobilisation and on speeding up the identification of the cause of the outbreak. We set up the crisis unit on 30 May 2011 and, at Commission level, we were fully mobilised at that point. My public health department mobilised the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the ECDC has activated its crisis mode in order to make scientific assessments as rapidly as possible.
The Commission immediately asked the ECDC to carry out a scientific assessment. In daily meetings with Member State experts, the Commission has coordinated assessment measures: the establishment of common case definitions, case reporting, patient questionnaires, sharing perspectives on treatment, and hygiene advice to the public are some of the outputs we have achieved in a very short time span.
We have to be very careful and we have to keep everything in perspective. It is easy for all of us to sit in judgment with hindsight and to make statements, rather than being in the eye of the storm when a crisis is happening. We have to be careful in our statements and criticism because, while insisting – as I do – that decisions be made on the basis of well-sustained evidence, we should not terrify those who are called upon to take risky decisions, sometimes in very difficult situations, fearing that afterwards they will be put in the dock and everyone will pass judgment on their decisions. I think this aspect of situation management is very important.
The same goes for checking and controlling the information that is circulating. We have a system in Europe that allows for fast communication and, in order to have fast communication, we apply the subsidiarity principle – looking to the lowest possible level as the base from which communication should start. We have to be careful because, if we begin to add layer upon layer of controls and checks to verify the information circulating, then we will defeat the purpose of speed, and in circumstances where health is concerned, and where life and death is sometimes at stake, speed is of the utmost importance.
As regards information, we are supplying continuous information as we receive it. In this respect, we at the Commission agree that coordinated and rapid communication is an essential element of risk management. If you remember, in 2009-2010, as a result of our H1N1 experience, we set up a system to coordinate public health communication, and our EU Health Security Committee has a network of communicators. We will need to involve regional actors more effectively in this process, as well as the World Health Organisation (WHO). As recently as yesterday, I was on the phone with Margaret Chan, the Director-General of the WHO, about this aspect of coordinating information and ensuring full coordination before any communication takes place.
We will study what happened, and undertake closer investigations and analyses. Once we are confident that the contamination has been stopped, we will concentrate on what happened in the information sector, with regard to investigation protocols and in terms of coordination across the board when the crisis occurred, and we will then reflect on whether we need more tools and closer European coordination. That may be part of the answer but, as you say, it is going to involve a lot of discussion both here in Parliament and also at Member State level.
On the issue of compensation, this will be discussed this afternoon in the AGRI Council, and I am sure that my colleague, Commissioner Cioloş, is doing his utmost to identify and develop ways and means of compensating our farmers who have been suffering as a result of this problem."@en1
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