In its session of 15 January the European Parliament adopted a Resolution concerning access to the health services by the elderly with the aim of developing cooperation between member states in this sector in the years ahead. The European Parliament considers it essential to guarantee access to the health services by the elderly, not only in terms of treatment and hospitalisation, but also in terms of preventive care, rehabilitation and any other service aimed at ensuring that the elderly remain self-sufficient for as long as possible. The Resolution also proposes the adoption of an EU framework law harmonized between the various states and an overhaul of the juridical framework for cross-frontier access to health care in the European Union. It also recommends the adoption of a “European health card” that would be valid in all the member countries. The Resolution, lastly, “invites the European Convention to insert in the draft Constitution, as a general objective, a high level of health protection, and to proclaim health policy a sector in which competence is shared between the Union and the member states, so that the EU may, as in the past, intervene also in the legislative field to supplement the policy of member states”.
