WRITTEN QUESTION P-3476/01 by Charles Tannock (PPE-DE) to the Commission. Patients' rights to medical appliances in other Member States.
Date: 2001-12-10
Institutions: European Parliament, Provisional data
Subjects: EU Member State, EU national, freedom to provide services, health care, health expenditure, patient's rights, redemption

6.6.2002

EN

Official Journal of the European Communities

C 134 E/237

Answer given by Mr Solbes Mira on behalf of the Commission

(11 February 2002)

The Commission looked into swap transactions carried out by Member States. These transactions involved
management of debt and it was decided that debt had to be valued after swap transactions. For
measurement of the impact of swap transactions on the deficit in 1997, the European System of National
and Regional Accounts in the Community (ESA) 79 was the manual of reference. However, the ESA 79
dealt only with swap on foreign exchange and not with swaps on interest which could have a potential
effect on the deficit. In the absence of a clear regulation of the ESA 79 on interest rate swap, Eurostat
would have treated such transactions by using the ESA 95 as a reference manual. ESA 95, at that date,
treated interest rate swaps as transactions which would have had an effect (positive or negative) on the
deficit.

This principle has been recently reaffirmed in a special Regulation concerning the treatment of swaps in
the framework of the Excessive Deficit Procedure (EDP), Regulation (EC) No 2558/2001 of the Parliament
and of the Council of 3 December 2001 amending Council Regulation (EC) No 2223/96 as regards the
reclassification of settlements under swaps arrangements and under forward rate agreements (1).

If the Member State in question has used the swap facilities for reducing its deficit, this would not be
objectable from a statistical point of view because of the treatment foreseen by ESA 79 and ESA 95.

(1) OJ L 344, 28.12.2001.

(2002/C 134 E/251)

WRITTEN QUESTION P-3476/01

by Charles Tannock (PPE-DE) to the Commission

(10 December 2001)

Subject: Patients’ rights to medical appliances in other Member States

It has been reported in the British press that British citizens have recently travelled to Denmark to be
fitted-out at their own expense with digital-technology hearing aids which are not widely available on the
British state-funded National Health Service.

Is it the Commission’s understanding that following the Decker and Kohll judgements at the European
Court of Justice, which gave two Luxembourg nationals the right to claim the costs of spectacles and false
teeth from their government after receiving treatment in Germany and France, that citizens of a Member
State, if unable to acquire a medical appliance such as a hearing aid within a reasonable time through their
own national healthcare delivery system, would be entitled to purchase that medical appliance in another
Member State and present the bill to their own government, and that this would apply equally to citizens
of a state such as the U. K. where the national healthcare delivery system does not involve a national
insurance component?

(2002/C 134 E/252)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-3533/01

by Charles Tannock (PPE-DE) to the Commission

(8 January 2002)

Subject: Patients’ rights to seek treatment (including operations) in other EU Member States

Does the Commission believe that the judgment in the case of B. S. M. Geraets-Smits v Stichting
Ziekenfonds and H. T. M. Peerbooms v Stichting CZ Groep Zorgverzekeringen (Case C-157/99) before the