COUNCIL CONCLUSIONS of 30 April 1998 on the integration of health protection requirements in Community policies (98/C 169/01)

THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION,

Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Community;

REAFFIRMING its resolutions of 20 December 1995 and 12 November 1996 on the integration of health protection requirements into Community policies (1) and noting that as requested in these resolutions, the Commission is drawing up appropriate methods and criteria as a basis for the integration of health requirements into other Community policies, and for evaluating the effects of Community policies on human health;

WELCOMES the Commission's third annual report of 27 January 1998 on the integration of health protection requirements in Community policies (1996);

WELCOMES also the new format consisting of a concise report and a separate working document giving a detailed overview of Community activities with a health impact;

NOTES that this report concentrates on major developments in 1996, including those in food and agricultural policy (in particular those developments connected with a possible link between bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and a new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (nvCJD), in the field of research, in environmental protection, in social policy development, and in other policy areas of particular relevance to health;

NOTES the wide range of health-related activities in these major areas of Community policy that are described in the accompanying Commission services working document;

NOTES the factors which the Commission identifies as being key to making progress in this field, and welcomes the Commission's intention to consider instruments to give effect to such progress and to return to these issues in its fourth report;

INVITES the Commission to produce its fourth report quickly and to aim to present subsequent reports within one year after the end of the period they cover;

INVITES the Commission to include sections on public health impact in its annual reports on the implementation of the previous year's overall work programme and, as requested by the Council in its abovementioned resolutions, to indicate in its annual forward work programme all proposals which may have an impact on health protection.

(1) OJ C 350, 30.12.1995, p. 2 and OJ C 374, 11.12.1996, p. 3.