This Commission has acted swiftly to ensure that the Community s approach to health and consumer protection is fully coherent and as comprehensive as possible. This includes of course measures to meeting the challenges of the enlargement process. Let me start with a few words on health. One important initiative was taken in May of last year when the Commission published a working paper on health and enlargement . The aim of this document was to help identify potential issues related to health and accession, to raise awareness of both Member States and candidate countries and to identify actions that could be taken over the next few years.
Accession countries differ.
Each of them has its own system, tradition and specific health situation. We must be careful, therefore, not to generalise either about the problems they face or about the solutions. But nonetheless, taking the countries as a group, we can see that there are a number of elements that apply to almost all. The problems they are facing are in many respects different from, and often more intractable than those of existing Member States . Their health status indicators compare poorly with those of the Member States of the Community, they face serious problems with communicable diseases, their health systems are in need of significant reform and - with one or two exceptions the Candidate countries have few resources to spend on health.