Mr President, let me begin by disagreeing with Mr Blokland for once, and I will explain to Hans why later. I would like wholeheartedly to support the proposal from the European Commission, together with my colleague’s, Mr Mantovani’s, proposal. In Europe we all have the same problem. We all have healthcare that is expanding, certainly financially. Why? Because we are dealing with emancipated citizens, citizens who have a different lifestyle, citizens who want more and who want better quality. We also have facilities that are making healthcare more expensive. We all want to keep this system under control, but we would all also like to be able to respond to this justified demand on the part of our citizens. This means we will have to discuss a number of matters with each other, perhaps not with a view to doing everything in the same way but with a view to finding out how we can all learn from each other’s experience. Incidentally, I must now make a critical comment about the communication from the European Commission. In the Netherlands, healthcare is not financed via taxes but via premiums; the situation is therefore different from what it says in the communication. I also see that the communication – and this is why I am so much in favour of this open method of coordination – states that in those countries in which only a small proportion is financed via private insurance and the bulk via taxes, the best example in the table being Luxembourg, the per capita cost of healthcare is simply considerably lower. That is therefore something that we can learn from one another. What we should also have learned from one another is that Europe actually plays a major role in the field of healthcare already, despite the fact that we have little to say formally. Firstly via the article in the Treaty in which achieving a high level of healthcare protection is stated as an objective. Incidentally, Hans, Dutch citizens benefit a lot from this. Secondly via the deepening of the internal market; we do in fact have a great deal to say about appliances and certainly also about medicines. So we should – and I would like to ask the Commissioner if she agrees – come up with solutions for the shortages and gaps in order to achieve proper financeability. In this case I am thinking about the whole range of medicines, for example. If we were to do something about generic medicines, we would be able to save EUR 500 million a year in our country alone. I therefore say to the Commissioner: do something about it, start taking targeted action on this point in consultation with your colleague Mr Byrne. Now to go back briefly to that high level of protection. The Dutch citizen benefits from that too. Why? Because with that high level, we can at least arrange for people to have the opportunity to go abroad for healthcare if care in the Netherlands is inadequate because it is a demand-led system, the last communist system still in existence in Europe. Furthermore, we cannot declare a certain treatment to be experimental. No, that has all been tested by the European Court of Justice. I am convinced that Europe can do a lot, does do a lot and should actually do even more in the area of healthcare, even if it is initially via the open coordination method. In any event the first reports reveal that we can learn an awful lot from one another.

Political group: PPE-DE