Renew Europe supports the appointment of Stella Kyriakides as Commissioner for Health
Coordinators of the European Parliament's Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety and the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development have assessed the performance of Stella Kyriakides (Cyprus). They agreed that the title Health and Food Safety would better reflect the content of Ms Kyriakides’s portfolio. . The outcome of the assessment was positive, MEPs agreed that the Commissioner-designate is well-suited to take charge of the EU's health and food-safety policy in the coming 5 years.
During the hearing Renew Europe's members got commitments from Ms Kyriakides to decrease the EU's dependency on pesticides and to increase transparency for their authorisation procedures; to step up EU action against cancer; making the mental health agenda one of the priorities under her tenure; developing an essential medicine list as well as proposing legislation for early notification of medicine shortages. However, she admitted herself that she did not convince MEP regarding pesticides reduction.
Pascal Canfin MEP (Renaissance, France), Chair of the ENVI Committee commented:
"I'm happy to work with a passionate and dedicated new commissioner who has an excellent command of health issues and has clear ideas on reducing existing health inequalities. However, we have some concerns regarding the use of pesticides. She will have to demonstrate her willingness through concrete actions and objectives to address this problem in order to meet citizen expectations on food safety."
Nils Torvalds MEP (Svenska folkpartiet, Finland), Renew Europe's ENVI Coordinator said:
"I'm looking forward to a fruitful cooperation with Ms Kyriakides in the coming years. The health of 500 million European citizens must be amongst the top priorities of the new Commission and our Group will be ready to support the development & implementation of innovative actions to achieve this."
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