ESRS Meeting at the European Parliament

The ESRS Board is establishing preliminary contacts with members of the European Parliament in order to establish legal initiatives aimed to coordinate policies on sleep research and sleep medicine in Europe. Such policies should have the ultimate goal of improving education, standards of clinical care, work-related legislation and research across the European Union and would include:

1. Educating more professionals to deal with the increasing demands incurred by sleep disorders.
2. Creating common European guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders.
3. Creating common European legislation regarding work arrangements and limitations of working hours in safety-sensitive professions.
4. Increasing the awareness of the importance of sleep and the health consequences of sleep loss among the general public.
5. Increasing scientific research on sleep and its disturbances.

In that regard, the ESRS Board sent in October 2007 a letter and a position paper to several members of the EU Parliament. On July 2, 2008, Thomas Pollmächer (ESRS President) and Diego Garcia-Borreguero (ESRS Secretary) held a Meeting in Brussels with Maria Sornosa, Spanish member of the EU Parliament, during which potential legal initiatives were discussed. These different possibilities will be evaluated by the ESRS Board over the coming weeks.

However, the purpose of the ESRS Board is to create a permanent contact group at the EU Institutions and intensify its lobbying activity. In order to achieve our goals, we need to contact EU-MPs from all parliamentary groups and from all countries, and need the support of our members across the European Union. The following list contains the members of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety at the European parliament. As we need to coordinate our policies, we encourage the ESRS membership to inform the ESRS secretary (esrs@esrs.eu) if they know or could get in touch with any of them.

List of members of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI)

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