| EU Policy on CAM |
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Despite being made up of 27 European Member States in which a significant proportion (at least 33%) of the population use CAM as part of their healthcare provision, the EU has hardly any policies that specifically refer to CAM. One of the main reasons for this is that the EU Treaties are worded so as to protect the area of health care delivery as the responsibility of individual member states. Article 152 EC Treaty (Amsterdam Treaty)
(5). Community action in the field of public health shall fully respect the responsibilities of the Member States for the organisation and delivery of health services and medical care. European Parliament Resolution - the (infamous) Lannoye/Collins Report In 1997 the European Parlaiment adopted a weak resolution on 'non-conventional medicine' which made number of demands on the EU Council and EU Commission. The report's rapporteur Paul Lannoye MEP was so disappointed in the way that the report had been weakened by negative amendments that he abandoned it at the last minute and forced the Parliament's Chairman at the time, Mr Ken Collins, to add his name to it to enable it to be adopted. The report had seven resolutions. These were: 1 Calls on the Commission, if the results of the study allow, to launch a process of recognising non-conventional medicine and, to this end, to take the necessary steps to encourage the establishment of appropriate committees; 2. Calls on the Commission to carry out a thorough study into the safety, effectiveness, area of application and the complementary or alternative nature of all non-conventional medicines and to draw up a comparative study of the various national legal models to which non-conventional medical practitioners are subject; 3 .Calls on the Commission, in formulating European legislation on non-conventional forms of medicine, to make a clear distinction between non-conventional medicines which are 'complementary' in nature and those which are 'alternative' medicines in the sense that they replace conventional medicine; 4. Calls on the Council after completion of the preliminary work referred to in paragraph 2 above to encourage the development of research programmes in the field of non- conventional medicines covering the individual and holistic approach, the preventive role and the specific characteristics of the non-conventional medical disciplines; undertakes to do likewise; 5 Urges the Commission to submit a report as soon as possible to the Council and European Parliament on the results of the studies and research already carried out under budget item B-7142 which, since 1994, has been earmarked for research into the effectiveness of homeopathy and other non-conventional medicines; 6. Calls on the Commission, in examining the effectiveness of forms of therapy used in non- conventional medicine, to ensure that none of the treatments used in the Member States makes use of medicines made from the organs of threatened animal species, which would constitute involvement in illegal trafficking; 7. Calls on the Commission to submit a proposal for a Directive on food supplements which are frequently situated on the border between dietary and medicinal products. Such legislation should help guarantee good manufacturing practice with a view to consumer protection without restricting freedom of access or choice and ensure the freedom of all practitioners to recommend such products; calls on the Commission to remove trade barriers between Member States by giving manufacturers of health products free access to all the markets in the EU; 8. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission and the governments of the Member States. Herbal and Homeopathic medicines are inadequately regulated by the EU directives Over the past twenty years first homeopathic medicines and then herbal medicines have become regulated through EU directives. Both categories of medicines now face a chaotic and completely unharmonised future - not the aim of the EU regulators but in reality the case nonetheless. Not all Member States have fully implemented the directives and many of those that have have done so in quite an arbitrary heterogeneous manner such that access to these medicine for consumers, practitioners and patients varies enormously from one country to the next. |
