BRUSSELS, Feb 23 (APM) - Hopes within the pharmaceutical industry and among patients that greater EU input into national budgetary planning would secure greater healthcare spending - and so increased drug budgets - have yet to deliver much in the way of results, as a last-minute plea from health campaigners to the European Parliament on Monday demonstrated.

European Public Health Alliance, the principal European umbrella association, wrote to the European Parliament's economic affairs committee in advance of a February 24 vote in a bid to win even the smallest attention to health in the report it is preparing.

Polish MEP Dariusz Rosati is seeking backing for a report he has drafted on the so-called European semester - the system that the EU has created to try to avoid a repeat of the public spending problems that member states experienced in the economic and financial crisis.

Following the sovereign debt crisis and economic recession in Europe, the EU established new powers of coordination and oversight in the fiscal and macroeconomic policies of its member states. This framework provides for both direct inclusion of measures relating to health and indirect impacts upon health through other policies.

But Rosati's draft report makes no mention whatever of healthcare.

By contrast, the parliament's health committee adopted in late January an opinion which urged member states and the European Commission to give full attention to healthcare in their budgetary planning.

It said the European semester "should be a tool for safeguarding high quality and high efficiency in national health systems" and that it was the sustainability of the healthcare sector was important because of its role in the overall economy, with 8% of the total European workforce and 10% of the gross domestic product of the EU.

And it underlined the semester's potential value in winning commitments from national governments "to strengthen their healthcare systems to ensure high quality, accessible and equitable healthcare for all citizens".

Peggy Maguire, president of EPHA, in her letter of February 23, reminded the economic affairs committee of these arguments.

She particularly highlighted "the danger of short-term savings for the mid- to long-term costs" and for "the future development of high-quality and high-efficiency healthcare systems".

EPHA "strongly supports the opinion adopted by the health committee", she said, urging the economic affairs committee - which has the principal voice in this subject - " to ensure that the suggestions made are incorporated into the final report, pressing upon member states and the commission that the European semester must encourage investment in health and the sustainability of health systems in order to promote a full and healthy return to economic growth."

Leading figures in the European pharmaceutical industry have repeatedly suggested that the semester exercise holds out hopes of a more stable and strategic view of the role of medicines in healthcare.

On February 23, EFPIA told APM in an email that the semester "should be used to encourage genuine efficiency and quality in European healthcare systems not just short term financial objectives.

"Europe should aspire to reduce persistent health inequalities that exist across and within several countries and the European semester can be a tool to encourage this", it added.

EFPIA takes the view that "the financial sustainability of health systems in all member states can be assured through the adoption of a holistic set of reforms that includes prevention as well as an approach to the management of health care resources that rewards good health outcomes for the patient."

A note published late last year by the Italian presidency of the Council of Ministers also diplomatically urged better coordination and closer involvement of all actors if the semester was to function better.

The readiness of different European Parliament committees to work together on this will be, to some extent, demonstrated by how much the health committee views are taken on board in tomorrow's vote.

One of the observed weaknesses in the current approach to the semester is that even where the commission has made recommendations about how member states should adapt their health spending plans to get better value for money, the recommendations have often been ignored.

The Italian presidency note also recommended strengthening the semester's procedures to ensure greater compliance and implementation of the recommendations made to each country.

It urged that the cooperation among the EU organs involved in assessing health-related recommendations "needs to continue and be further strengthened", and "a joint review, by these bodies, of the implementation of health-related recommendations should also be considered."

The impact on health of the semester is also diminished by the dilution, compression or simple elimination of detailed recommendations to member states when the annual review takes place.

The 2015 exercise has still less to say about health than in previous years.

Healthcare is not mentioned in the part of the planning document that deals with the EU's new investment package, and is not named as a sector to be targeted by the 315 bn eurosthat the European Commission intends to inject into the European economy over the next three years.

pod/ns