No more and no less than the withdrawal of the texts in their current form. This is what the Chamber of Civil Servants and Public Employees (Chambre des fonctionnaires et employés publics, CHFEP) is calling for in its opinions published on Monday 10 March on bills 8399 and 8491 providing for the creation of a Luxembourg Medicines and Health Products Agency and a National Sales and Logistics Centre.

“The CHFEP does not question the need to create these official institutions whose purpose is, among other things, to control the quality and safety of medicines and health products and to ensure their safe supply in Luxembourg. However, the fact that the two institutions operate exclusively under private law is unacceptable,” explains the CHFEP, adding that bill 8399 was not even submitted to it by the government, “even though it directly concerns civil servants who are members of the CHFEP, so the professional chamber had to prepare an opinion on its own initiative.”

“What’s even worse is that the establishments are supposed to take over various tasks that are currently carried out by the health directorate, a public administration.”

A “joke” for Romain Wolff

At a meeting of the professional chamber, its president added, “Article 41 of the Constitution states that the field of public health is the responsibility of the State. This is a flagrant violation of the rule of law!”

“The commentary on bill 8491 ironically states that the reason for choosing private-law status for employees is that state salaries are not high enough to attract the necessary qualified staff.”

“This is a joke! [We cannot] under any circumstances allow the areas reserved for public law to be increasingly influenced by lobbyists seeking to manage public services according to purely profit-making criteria and to privatise the public service ever more.”

Entrusting tasks to the public service

In addition, bill 8491 provides that employees of the Luxembourg Agency for Medicines and Health Products--including those subject to a contractual relationship under private law--may carry out inspections and observe breaches of the law in the institution’s area of responsibility. “Under no circumstances can the CHFEP give its consent here. Inspections and the detection of breaches can only be carried out and established by officials sworn in by the judiciary.”

The CHFEP therefore “expressly” asks the government to withdraw the two bills in their current form and “entrust the tasks to be carried out by the two planned institutions to a public administration that will be managed exclusively in accordance with the rules applicable to the civil service.”

Changes to be made for the Chamber of Commerce

It should be noted that the Chamber of Employees, the Chamber of Commerce and the Chamber of Trades have issued their opinions on bill 8399. The Chamber of Commerce considers that it is able to approve the bill under opinion, “subject to taking into account its observations.” In this case, it recommends limiting missions to the management of crisis stocks and medicinal cannabis, suggests the creation of a list of critical medical, health and drug products, “defined with the private sector and the medical community, to be set by a grand-ducal regulation. The Chamber of Commerce invites the authors to present a more detailed financial estimate of the costs and investment related to this structure,” it adds in its opinion.

Bill 8491, tabled by health minister (CSV) on 31 January, has not yet been considered.

This article was originally published in .