European Multiple Sclerosis Platform seminar

Paul De Raeve from the European Federation of Nurses gave a passionate overview of how organizations need to work in order to find funds for key activities. He pointed at the need for some good detective work and for co-operation with others. He did so building on a solid organizational overview from johan ten Geuzendam from DG Employment at the European Commission that in detail explained how the different structural funds operate. He also gave some examples of what opportunities there is for patient associations to seek support from them – underlining that it’s the countries that are in charge of the prioritizations for them. He also pointed out that for the ERDF 2007-2013 period it’s quite a lot of money ear marked, 5 billion Euros, for health infrastructure efforts. Looking closer at his slide it did say however that this was only 1,5 % of the total funds. One wonder to what the rest goes.



David Lowe Head of the Secretariat of the European Parliament´s Petitions Committee gave an interesting overview of the work they do and the possibilities one have to impact via them by referring to one Italian and one Polish case. In both cases of the petitions sent to them concerned issues within the Member States responsibilities but they had anyway managed via influencing and personal engagements by the MEPs succeeded to help the patients in need.


I didn’t had not the opportunity to participate in the full seminar. That doesn’t mean that the other presentations was not as important or interesting – I just didn’t have enough time …