ABSTRACT
The food safety scandals of the 1990s have partly brought to light the ‘ignored history’ (Lefèbvre 1999: 16) of EU intervention in health by putting both a political and a media focus on this subject.1 However, by concentrating on food safety, a large number of Community activities in the health field have been overlooked. Right from its beginnings, the European Community has in fact been involved in health issues. First in the field of health and safety in the work place, then in the pharmaceutical area and the area of health professions and, to a lesser extent, in disease prevention.2 These first actions were linked to the construction of the common market (Berthod-Wurmser 1994). Towards the end of the 1980s, however, the Community engaged more directly in health matters by establishing public health programmes. The programmes entitled Europe against Cancer and Europe against AIDS, respectively set up in 1987 and 1991, were established and applied even before the Maastricht Treaty introduced any Community competencies in the field of public health (article 129), or before these were extended by the Amsterdam Treaty (article 152).
