European Commission drops health from services proposal in face of opp
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《英国医生杂志》
The health sector is to be excluded from draft European legislation designed to open up the market for services throughout the European Union抯 25 member states. The European Commission in Brussels has decided to radically overhaul its original proposal because of wide ranging opposition to the plans it tabled last year to abolish national restrictions on service providers.
The abrupt U turn, announced last week by Charlie McCreevy, the internal market commissioner, has been welcomed by medical organisations and by the British government. They had always maintained that because of its unique nature, the health sector should not be covered by the new rules. Under these rules, the service providers registered with their own national regulators would be able to operate throughout the union from their home base without any further formalities.
The proposal was designed to make it as easy for professionals—ranging from doctors and nurses to travel agents and software consultants—to work across Europe as it is for manufactured goods to be exported from one country to another.
The concept of likening health treatment to a range of commercial services had been widely criticised by many professional medical organisations. Last November the BMA warned that the proposed legislation could pose a threat to health safeguards for patients and, more widely, to the NHS (BMJ 2004;329:1064, 6 Nov). It argued that the "country of origin" principle at the heart of the proposal would mean that foreign doctors who had qualified in their home countries and decided to work in the United Kingdom would effectively be regulated by their home country.
As a result, the BMA claimed, the United Kingdom "would not be able to insist they work under the standards it lays down for its own doctors." Health groups were not the only opponents of the proposal. Governments in France, Germany, Sweden, Austria, and Belgium increasingly feared that the legislation would pave the way for social dumping. They maintain this would open the door for lower paid foreign employees to undercut their own nationals in sectors as varied as care for elderly people and public transport.
A Department of Health spokesman said that the decision to remove health from the legislation was "in line with the concerns that the UK, and other member states, had been raising about the problem." The pan-European umbrella organisation, the European Public Health Alliance, also pointed out that health provision is essentially a national, not European, responsibility.
Now that the commission has taken the lead, formal confirmation that health will not feature in the new legislation will come later this year when the European parliament and EU governments pronounce on the proposal. Already, 15 out of 25 national ministries have made it clear that the sector should be excluded.
Bowing to the inevitable, Mr McCreevy confirmed that major changes would have to be made to the original proposal if it was ever to be approved by EU governments and the European parliament and become law. Among the concessions, he said: "We need to exclude from the scope of the directive sectors such as health and publicly funded services of general interest."(Brussels Rory Watson)
The abrupt U turn, announced last week by Charlie McCreevy, the internal market commissioner, has been welcomed by medical organisations and by the British government. They had always maintained that because of its unique nature, the health sector should not be covered by the new rules. Under these rules, the service providers registered with their own national regulators would be able to operate throughout the union from their home base without any further formalities.
The proposal was designed to make it as easy for professionals—ranging from doctors and nurses to travel agents and software consultants—to work across Europe as it is for manufactured goods to be exported from one country to another.
The concept of likening health treatment to a range of commercial services had been widely criticised by many professional medical organisations. Last November the BMA warned that the proposed legislation could pose a threat to health safeguards for patients and, more widely, to the NHS (BMJ 2004;329:1064, 6 Nov). It argued that the "country of origin" principle at the heart of the proposal would mean that foreign doctors who had qualified in their home countries and decided to work in the United Kingdom would effectively be regulated by their home country.
As a result, the BMA claimed, the United Kingdom "would not be able to insist they work under the standards it lays down for its own doctors." Health groups were not the only opponents of the proposal. Governments in France, Germany, Sweden, Austria, and Belgium increasingly feared that the legislation would pave the way for social dumping. They maintain this would open the door for lower paid foreign employees to undercut their own nationals in sectors as varied as care for elderly people and public transport.
A Department of Health spokesman said that the decision to remove health from the legislation was "in line with the concerns that the UK, and other member states, had been raising about the problem." The pan-European umbrella organisation, the European Public Health Alliance, also pointed out that health provision is essentially a national, not European, responsibility.
Now that the commission has taken the lead, formal confirmation that health will not feature in the new legislation will come later this year when the European parliament and EU governments pronounce on the proposal. Already, 15 out of 25 national ministries have made it clear that the sector should be excluded.
Bowing to the inevitable, Mr McCreevy confirmed that major changes would have to be made to the original proposal if it was ever to be approved by EU governments and the European parliament and become law. Among the concessions, he said: "We need to exclude from the scope of the directive sectors such as health and publicly funded services of general interest."(Brussels Rory Watson)