European Forum, Brussels 12/11/09

Forum on Alcohol and Health 10.00 hrs – more than 70 people attending

Madelin has said before Christmas need to set up a small steering group to organize next Forum, producing proposals for new contents, and extra comments to commitments. Basically one representatives form each category (Industry, NGOs, Commission, Professional associations).

The report from the Science group has proposed, as next topics of the group, either alcohol at the workplace or alcohol availability and harm. The assembly decided to pick up the ^1st one, but must be under a precise mandate.

There is a preliminary report on Alcohol Strategy by the Commission in the website, dated september 2009.

Getting more data about youth exposure is certainly needed, a really independent study could be in the cards for 2010. Nick Sheron will try to involve other people to assess how it should be done.

Regarding the targeting of youth, shall we take the USA standard of 70/30 (i.e. 70% of the population is 21 or older, so no more than 30% of adverts should be targeted to minors) and cut it short ?

Self regulation on marketing: many data still missing, e.g. in retail and hospitality sectors, need to strengthen the system.

Report from Ireland “Get ‘em young”. Aneurin Owen said we know why youth drink, would be interesting to know why some of them don’t drink or drink very little. He will get in touch with Ceri Thompson to see how to take forward this issue.

Eurocommerce paper on self regulation of retailers and on premises: in various countries there are campaigns for the protection of minors, so that retailers can put more attention in selling alcohol to minors, also made through staff training programmes. One good examples of posters shown at a supermarket: Planning a party ? Don’t let good times go bad. Why not taking with you some snacks to go with drinks ? Why not taking some bottle of water too ?

Sterling University have published a review of existing projects about the effectiveness of alcohol education in schools in the European Union. 7 countries examined incl. Italy, but database insufficient to draw conclusions, except some evidence of small effect in 1-2 countries. Only 17 programmes reached the benchmark, and none from the eastern countries. These education projects often obtain knowledge and attitude changes, but not changes in behaviour. Family based programmes are most promising. Education anyway should be a minor part in a broader policy. But education without legislation does not work, legislation sets the rules, education explains to people why there are such rules. And many times it is not education in a true sense, it is just information. Again, we need more data, but it does not mean this is becoming a priority for the Forum.

First meeting of Clearing House (as deliberated by the Youth Task Force) took place on 15/9 and criteria for entering projects in the Data Base have been sent to the Advisory Group for comments. The step involving the dissemination of good practices, tools and templates will only come at a later stage (possibly, not even sure….). Validation is a criteria for entry of each project. The prototype of the input form was shown on premises, it looks quite complex, the criteria are rather tough, consequently the projects carried on by NGOs are at risk of being excluded, as not sufficiently scientifically validated (even though this fear was raised by NGOs during the Youth Task Force meetings, it is another rather disappointing achievement of the euro bureaucracy….).

As many as 28 Forum members have not submitted their interim report on commitment in time (deadline was 30 march 2009). This is rather unfortunate, Peter de Coninck said, because it is nearly a half of the total Forum members. Madelin added that he is ashamed to report to the new Health Commissioner, whoever he or she will be, that half of the Forum is not sticking to the commitments that had been freely taken at the beginning. Incidentally, I found out also the EMNA report was not considered valid, apparently the report was filed by the system as a draft and not as definite report. Once clarified this error, our report has been accepted. Strange enough Eurocare is late in supplying its report, but Mariann Skar said it is in the pipeline. However no doubt the severe criticism by Madelin was not addressing the NGOs but rather the industry, whose representatives were clearly embarrassed. They have been all invited to correct the situation by 15^th dec., otherwise the people dragging behind will be invited to resign from the Forum. Thereafter the presentation of the final report has been postponed from the end of the year to the end of april 2010 (a gift from the Commission).

Eurocare then presented its proposals for a series of Health warnings to be shown on bottles, inviting all of us to submit other samples, or just comments, by mid December, for a further discussion within February. Industry representatives were clearly annoyed by the proposal, and started asking who is Eurocare to make such proposal, or if they are trying to set the priorities for the Commission, and why they set deadlines etc. NGOs reacted strongly, I personally have stated that Health warnings must be shown on bottles, we were very disappointed when alcohol beverages were excluded from the nutrition warnings in 2008, that was a missed opportunity, we have to find another way to take this issue forward. Industry insisted that we want to demonize alcohol, NGOs replied it is rather information than demonization, it's a matter of ethics, a basic consumers' right. For example, in Australia they already put warnings which go as far as stating there is a breast cancer risk and a dependence risk.

Industry seemed disappointed because we have not been discussing the commitments which they hoped would become a showcase of their success (naturally, as many of them had delegated PR agencies .....)

Next Forum meeting on 11^th march, next Open Forum on 22^nd april.

Ennio Palmesino

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