"Our biggest achievement so far is that we have managed to raise knowledge on obesity and to get everybody to recognise that there is a problem," said Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou presenting the White Paper on 'A Strategy for Europe on Nutrition, Overweight and Obesity related health issues', adopted by the Commission on 30 May 2007.
"What consumers eat is up to them, but they should be able to make informed choices, and have a range of healthy options to choose from. That is why the Commission is reviewing the options for nutrition labelling, and calling on industry to advertise responsibly and reduce levels of salt, fats and sugar in food products," he added.
However, "given the urgency of the matter, it is better to try with self-regulation at first and see, in 2010, if there's a need for legislation," said Kyprianou arguing that "offering industry these two and half years", after which member states could decide to legislate, represented a "great incentive for industry to co-operate on the obesity problem".
Building on the EU obesity platform and the Green Paper on promoting healthy diets and physical activity, the White Paper calls for more cross-sectoral action-orientated partnerships across the EU. These would involve private actors and public health and consumer organisations.
The Commission is also urging the private sector to develop stronger advertising codes, the food and retailing industry to make greater efforts to reformulate foods and sport organisations to develop advertising and marketing campaigns to encourage physical activity focusing in particular on children.
With regard the obesity platform launched in March 2005, Kyprianou said that it "is starting to produce results even though we have not reached target yet." Therefore, this platform will continue discussions. A High-Level Group on nutrition, overweight and obesity related health issues will be established to liaise the platform at member state level to ensure exchange of best practices.
As to physical activity, Commissioner Kyprianou recognised that the issue is more in the hands of member states and that the challenge is not the same in all EU-27. "Children do not entertain themselves through physical activity anymore. Therefore, schools should re-introduce physical activity as entertainment to their curricula instead of pure physical performance exercise," he said.
