The European Commissioner responsible for Health and Food Safety, Vytenis Andriukaitis, joined the CoR's plenary session today for a debate on food waste and cross-border healthcare cooperation.
In his opening address, the Commissioner congratulated the CoR on its proactive action on food waste and invited members to join the Commission's EU platform on Food Loss and Food Waste, which will be set up in autumn and bring stakeholders together to define better measurements and identify action, including redirection of substandard food into animal feed and guidelines for food donation.
Taking the floor on behalf of the PES Group, the PES-NAT coordinator Karsten Uno Petersen, Regional Councillor from Denmark, stressed the importance of reducing food waste through European rules and regulations and called for a paradigm shift in food waste policy. "We need to move from selling as much as possible to selling better and avoid overproduction", he urged.
Petersen also pointed to persistent difficulties in the area of cross-border healthcare rights. "Better medicines mean better quality of life for our citizens, but increasing expenditure on medicines is a common challenge for Europe's regions", he underlines, pointing to the joint purchase of medicines between regions as one solution.
He was joined by Kevin Peel, Member of Manchester City Council, who, referring to the upcoming British referendum on EU membership, underlined the urgency to better showcase the EU's added value on the ground. "Whereas the 'Leave' campaigners claim that the National Health System is put at risk by the EU, the reality is the opposite. More needs to be done to show the benefits to states' healthcare systems of EU cooperation and funding" he urged, providing as an example the Juncker Plan's objective to finance a UK Metropolitan Hospital under the European Fund for Strategic Investments at €170 million, as well as the benefits of the cross-border healthcare directive, which allows UK families to access healthcare when travelling in Europe.
