- General information enquiries
- Call 00 800 6 7 8 9 10 11
- E-mail your questions
Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety
Accessibility tools
Service tools
Language selector
European Commission and Agencies Sientific Committees/Panels involved in
Risk Assessment
The European Union is committed to ensuring the health and safety of all
citizens residing in its territory. This means not only making sure that the
products circulating in the EU market are safe, but also being able to take
action against possible threats to health, such as for example infectious
diseases.
This is ensured by carrying out thorough risk assessments before any important
decision is taken. For this purpose, the EU has established specialised
agencies to carry out risk assessments in a number of areas, ranging from food
to pharmaceuticals and communicable diseases. In addition, in areas concerning
consumer safety, environment and health or emerging risks, the European
Commission has created specialised committees of independent scientific
experts.
The Chairpersons of these scientific committees and agencies meet on an annual
basis, in order to discuss and coordinate issues of common interest related to
risk assessment. At the 2008 annual meeting it was proposed to collaborate for
the establishment of a compilation of practices, related to the functioning of
the Commission and Agency Scientific Committees and Panels. This compilation
would include only aspects related to the organisation of the Committees/Panels
and their work and not address any risk assessment methodological issues.
As a first phase, the focus for sharing information is on the following three
aspects:
At this first phase of the project information has been included for ECDC, ECHA, EMA and the European Commission's independent scientific committees (SCCS, SCHER, SCENIHR).
As a second phase, depending on the feedback on this initiative, more aspects will be covered, such as for example the use of confidential data, how are experts reimbursed etc.