The Church and healthcare

Since the Church is an important provider of health services within the member states of the European Union, public consultations in this field “will have a significant impact on the way in which she will continue to provide these services in future”, points out DANIEL HISSNAUER in the October number of “Europe infos”, the monthly of COMECE (Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community) and OCIPE (Catholic Office of Information and Initiative for Europe). With reference to the Services Directive currently under discussion at the European Parliament, and the recent announcement by Commissioner Markos Kyprianou of a public consultation on health services, Hissnauer remarks that “the provision of such services by the Churches is linked to the corresponding national systems”, whose national peculiarities “the Commission should recognize, especially if its objective remains that of transforming an already existing jurisdiction into new legislative provisions”. CHURCH AND HEALTH SERVICES. According to Hissnauer, we also need to “decide whether social services and health services can be treated separately”. “Church organizations affiliated – he points out -, in contrast to private providers of health services, offer their own services in the sphere of the exercise of their religious freedom and according to the Christian vocation that is intrinsic to them”. The participants in the public consultation, in which “the Churches are invited to actively participate with their own points of view and their own experiences”, include not only the providers of services but also the regional and national healthcare authorities. European Commissioners Charles McCreevy and Vladimir Špidla will coordinate the process of consultation, which is expected to be concluded by the end of 2006. The proposals that will come out of it will be presented during the first half of 2007. UKRAINE MOVING TOWARD EUROPE. In spite of the fact that “ Europe is a distant and uncertain prospect, the foreign policy of Ukraine is directed in an irreversible manner at integration in the Union”, says JOANNA LOPATOWSKA , following the official visit to Brussels of Victor Yanukovych, Ukrainian premier now in his second term of office. Already Prime Minister in the three-year period 2002-2005 and accused of vote rigging, the premier recently signed a “Pact of National Unity” which reaffirms, explains Lopatowska, “the government’s aspiration to turn the Ukraine into a member of the EU and of NATO”. The Pact “envisages the implementation of a joint Ukraine-EU action plan and the opening of negotiations to create a free-trade zone” between the former Soviet republic and the EU. However, points out the journalist, the prospect of Ukraine’s membership seems finally to have faded, “since the majority of European member states don’t want to hear of any further enlargement”. At the same time we are witnessing the paradox that “the majority of Ukrainians are favourable to entry into Europe, but almost two thirds oppose membership of NATO, an objective easier to achieve from a political point of view”. In its process of democratisation, “the Ukraine has experienced significant changes at the political, legal and economic level – observes Lopatowska -, and the recently elected government hopes to create its own democratic structures, consolidate the nation and live in dignity”. To achieve these objectives, “the country knows it cannot isolate itself from Europe”. THE PRINCIPLE OF PROPORTIONALITY. “A principle of the greatest importance” that “epitomises all the teachings Europe has drawn from its own history” is, according to the Jesuit PETER KNAUER , the so-called “principle of proportionality” by virtue of which – to quote the draft Constitutional Treaty – “the content and the form of the Union’s action shall not exceed what is necessary to achieve the objectives of the Constitution”. It is a principle “widely recognized in jurisprudence”. It states that, before any action be undertaken, “those undertaking it should check whether the disadvantages that might derive from it for anyone could be justified, whether the action itself is appropriate, and whether is it necessary and not disproportionate” to the indispensable means to achieve the objectives set”. In Father Knauer’s view, “it is the fundamental principle of ethics, even if ethicists themselves are still slow to recognize it”. Only this principle – explains the Jesuit – is able to clearly distinguish the actions to which a response can be given from those that cannot. The latter have a common denominator: that of being disproportionate and incompatible with their raison d’être, indeed of comprehensively undermining it in the long run”. “The principle of proportionality – concludes Knauer – demands that the good of Europe be sought only by acting in such a way as not to compromise the future of humanity”.