European Committees Research Articles

The Utility of Using the Bispectral Index—Vista for Detecting Cross-Clamping Decline in Cerebral Blood Flow Velocity

Patients undergoing carotid endarterectomy for extracranial internal carotid artery stenosis are at risk of cerebral ischemia/hypoperfusion. Criterion recommended by European and American committees to determine whether to place a shunt consisted of a decline in transcranial Doppler ultrasonography-measured middle cerebral artery blood flow velocity (MCBFV) to < 30% to 40% of intraoperative preclamp value. To assess the discriminative power of the bispectral index (BIS)-Vista monitor for detecting a 40% decline in MCBFV with cross-clamping. In 20 patients undergoing carotid endarterectomy under remifentanil/propofol anesthesia, BIS-Vista data, MCBFV, and pulsatility index from bilaterally mounted BIS-Vista and transcranial Doppler monitors were continuously recorded. Coefficient of determination revealed good correlation (r = 0.763) between ipsilateral BIS-Vista and MCBFV after cross-clamping. BIS-Vista exhibited a high discriminative power of 0.850 (95% confidence interval, 0.455-0.966) area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve in detecting an ipsilateral 40% MCBFV decline. Two-way analysis of variance (location by time) suggests that BIS-Vista exhibited a global decline; ie, both BIS-Vistas declined when 1 carotid on either side was clamped because there was no significant interhemispheric difference (P = .112) in mean BIS-Vista values over time. Although we demonstrated good correlation and high discriminative power of the BIS-Vista monitor in depicting a MCBFV decline that could serve as indicator of decline in cerebral activity, BIS-Vista cannot be considered a reliable indicator of cerebral ischemia/hypoperfusion that could replace transcranial Doppler monitoring to determine whether a shunt is to be placed.

Principles of European Prison Law and Policy: Penology and Human Rights. By D. Van Zyl Smit and S. Snacken (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, 464pp. 75.00 hb)

This is a large, dense book that no one is ever likely to read from cover to cover. It is a work of reference, a text into which one might dip to get answers to historical, developmental questions, or a feel for what principles inform the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) or inspection bodies like the Council of Europe Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) when it comes to prisoner conditions or various decisions relating to prisoners. How well does the text work from those standpoints? First, the authors are eminently well qualified for their task. Both are distinguished academics who have been around and got their feet dirty. Both speak the principal, relevant, European languages fluently, have worked closely as insiders with the Council of Europe and the CPT (for whom Sonja Snacken is regularly employed as an ad hoc expert undertaking inspection visits), have close associations with leading academic centres in different European countries, and yet have wide experience outside Europe (in Dirk van Zyl Smit's case, mostly in South Africa, where he previously held an academic post in Cape Town). So, their view is not confined to textual analysis: they understand the relevance of the law for the inhabitants of cell blocks and they are at home with the literature on the sociology of the prison and the psychology of imprisonment. Thus, Chapter Two comprises a review of the latter and Chapter One is a history of European prison law and policy—the creation and practice of the ECtHR, the operation of the CPT since 1990, the various iterations of what are now the European Prison Rules and other related codes, etc. These domains are covered deftly and with authority.

Randomizing Europe: the lottery as a decision-making procedure for policy creation in the EU

In this paper we argue for the introduction of lotteries as a decision-making procedure for the creation of policy in modern democracies. Our suggestions are focused on the political system of the European Union. We start our line of argument by bringing to readers' attention the recent renaissance of the lottery in democratic practices and political theory. Next we follow the rich body of literature on policy-making in the European Union and identify three aspects of the European political system which are normatively problematic. In the last sections of the paper, we suggest dealing with these problems by the implementation of a system of decision-by-lot. Our reform agenda includes: (1) a weighted lottery in order to distribute a reduced number of positions within the European Commission among the European Union member states; (2) the drawing of lots for the members, the chairpersons and the rapporteurs of the European Parliament's committees; and finally (3) the introduction of a second chamber of the European Parliament whose members would be chosen by lottery among all European Union citizens.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa et bêta-lactamines à l’heure de l’Europe

Breakpoints harmonization concerning six European committees is being conducted within the European Committee for Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing for a few years and is now finalized for beta-lactam antibiotics. This article describes the impact of breakpoint modifications on percentage of susceptibility of P. aeruginosa to beta-lactams in comparison with previous French National Committee breakpoints (CA-SFM). This harmonization leads to the need for new recommendations about diameter breakpoints and for updating breakpoints in antibiotic susceptibility testing automated devices. Moreover, it points out the importance of MICs and quantitative diameter data in order to follow the evolution of antibiotic susceptibility.

Introducing human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination - a challenge for European vaccine advisory committees and public health services

The development of efficient human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines has required long lasting and tremendous research and development efforts by both academia and industry. However, their availability now turns out to be a major challenge for the public health services of many member states within the European Union (EU) and beyond.

The 10th anniversary of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities

The Framework Convention (FCNM) entered into force 10 years ago. It seeks to protect national minorities in specific areas. In the beginning there were substantial criticisms of the FCNM. Today, however, it is widely accepted that some of the "weaknesses" in the language of the FCNM are in fact "strengths" as work with the FCNM has developed and civil society has become engaged. In this context, the monitoring of the Convention by the so-called Advisory Committee, made up of independent experts, and by the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers plays a decisive role. The weak language in the text of the FCNM has led to its wide acceptance (39 states have by now ratified the Convention), but has been robustly interpreted by the Advisory Committee. Thus a number of important achievements have been consolidated from the first monitoring cycle. Nevertheless, there remain many challenges ahead to ensure that the monitoring process remains dynamic and relevant for the next decade.

Camphor in flavourings and other food ingredients with flavouring properties - Opinion of the Scientific Panel on Food Additives, Flavourings, Processing Aids and Materials in Contact with Food on a request from the Commission.

Camphor in flavourings and other food ingredients with flavouring properties - Opinion of the Scientific Panel on Food Additives, Flavourings, Processing Aids and Materials in Contact with Food on a request from the Commission.

The Telecoms Packagee and the Copyright Amendments A European Legal Framework to Stop Downloading, and Monitor the Internet

This paper considers how imminent changes to European telecommunications law will permit the monitoring and blocking of websites and peer-to-peer exchanges by ISPs, in a way that is currently not legally possible. These legal changes will also permit ISPs to sanction users by suspending or terminating Internet access. And they are essential in order for the French ‘riposte graduee’ or ‘3 strikes’ copyright enforcement measures to be implemented.The changes are a series of hidden amendments related to copyright, and contained in the so-called ‘Telecoms package’. This paper argues that these amendments will effectively erode the ISP’s legal status of ‘mere conduit’, which currently protects individual rights and liberties on the Internet. It argues that the ‘mere conduit’ status should be preserved, and the copyright amendments rejected.The proposed copyright amendments will result in the loss of individual freedom and privacy on the Internet – in breach of fundamental principles of human rights law in Europe. Ultimately, they could open the door to wider political or commercial censorship, and this is the real danger of permitting them to get into law. The risk is that this will happen without proper legislative scrutiny or public debate. The European Parliament committees responsible for the Telecoms package voted on July 7th and the Parliament as a whole voted on September 2nd.

John Lowell Kilgour

A civil servant and public health doctor who helped to eradicate smallpox John Kilgour was director of coordination at the World Health Organization and a major player in the smallpox...

A Transparency Gap?

How much are European citizens entitled to know about the European Union's (EU) Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) governance system in general and the European Commission's Agricultural Advisory Committees (AACs) (Agricultural Advisory Groups since April 2004) in particular, and to what extent can EU institutions, the public, and committee members exercise scrutiny over the AACs? Two themes underlie these questions: access to information and scrutiny. These are intrinsic to the notion of transparency, which the article sets out to explore and comment on. It attempts to define the notion in relation to its essential components and in order to assess whether CAP governance through committees is transparent enough to ensure that citizens are ultimately able to exercise democratic control over it, this article gauges AAC intelligibility. Using original empirical research carried out in Autumn 2003, based on interviews with AAC members derived from socio-economic groups as well as European institutions' internal documentary evidence, the article argues that these structures suffer a substantial transparency deficit.

Hypertension Treatment Guidelines: Is It Time for an Update?

Hypertension Treatment Guidelines: Is It Time for an Update?

Which Countries Learn from Which?

Which countries learn from which other countries in the course of cooperation in the Nordic and European open method of coordination (OMC) committees? That is the key question this article addresses.The goal is to contribute to the body of research on Europeanization by exploring its ‘horizontal’ thrust. The object of the study is the direction of learning as perceived by participants in European OMC committees and Nordic committees with similar functions. The approach implies cross-testing of two key hypotheses: (1) the direction of learning in international committees is dependent on which countries can show ‘best practice’, and (2) learning in international committees is dependent on the degree to which countries share a similar economic-political background (the ‘most similar’ hypothesis). The cross test affirms the ‘best practice’ hypothesis, whereas the ‘most similar’ hypothesis is shown to be significant only to the extent that it concurs with the ‘best practice’ hypothesis.

EUCAST Technical Note on linezolid

EUCAST Technical Note on linezolid

Building Energy Analysis (BEA): A methodology to assess building energy labelling

The building sector, one of the fastest growing in terms of energy consumption, accounts for over 40% of final energy, a figure which is growing. Building energy legislation at EU level is found in EU Directive 93/73/CEE [Directive 93/73/EEC of the Council of 13 September 1993 on the Limitation of the Carbon Dioxide Emissions through the Improvement of Energy Efficiency (SAVE) 1993], EU directive 2002/91/CE called Energy Performance of Buildings Directive EPBD [Directive 2002/91/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 December 2002 on the Energy Performance of Buildings] and the EU Green Paper [Commission of the European Committees, Green Paper, Towards an European Strategy for the Security of Energy Supply, Brussels, 2000]. This give a clear view of the need and priority that the EU has for reducing energy consumption in the building sector, both for furthering in compliance of international agreements (Kyoto protocol and forthcoming commitments) as well as for reducing its energy dependency, and hence for leading its development towards sustainability. The implementation of the EPBD has as its primary aim the establishment and application of energy certification programs. The aim of energy certification programs is to guarantee energy saving and to reduce CO 2 emission as a consequence of the EU commitment to comply with the Kyoto protocol. Obtaining energy effectiveness labelling means the achievement of energy quality, allowing a decrease in CO 2 kilograms emitted from lighting, heating and cooling buildings without any loss in terms of comfort. This work proposes a new methodology called Building Energy Analysis (BEA) that allows implementation of EPBD on energy certification of buildings. In this paper we analyse the different steps of BEA methodology (heat and cooling load, energy demand, energy consumption and CO 2 emission). The program ends with energy labelling of the building. In addition, we present a practical study of a small health centre that is analyzed with BEA methodology and we compare it with other energy simulation programs like Hourly Analysis Program (HAP) and PowerDOE. The results of energy labelling are very similar for both simulation programs.

Consent and anonymization in research involving biobanks: differing terms and norms present serious barriers to an international framework.

Biological samples—such as tissues, blood and cells—are an increasingly important tool for research into human diseases and their genetic and physiological causes. To ease their storage and access, many of these samples are now stored in biobanks. The number of human biological samples in such collections amounted to several hundred million in 1999 in the USA alone—about one sample per US citizen (Eiseman, 2000; Azarow et al , 2003)—and is increasing rapidly. Three‐quarters of the clinical trials that drug companies submit to the US Food and Drug Administration (Rockville, MD, USA) for approval now include a provision for sampling and storing human tissue for future genetic analysis (Abbott, 2003). At the same time, there is a boom of population biobanks, as more and more countries establish new sample collections (Kaiser, 2002). Among the best known are: the Icelandic Health Sector Database; the Estonian Genome Project; the UK Biobank; the CARTaGENE Project in Quebec, Canada; the Banco Nacional de ADN in Spain; the International HapMap Project; and several US biobanks, such as the National Children's Study, the Marshfield Clinic's Personalized Medicine Research Project and the National Health and Nutrition Examinations Surveys. ![][1] This boom of biobanks has spawned a ‘boomlet’ of regulations and guidelines, which has created controversies, particularly about the importance and definition of informed consent. The consent of participants is usually required before biobank samples can be used in research, but the nature of this consent, and how it is obtained, vary widely. Many European guidelines take the view that general consent is acceptable to use samples for future, as yet unspecified, research projects; US and Canadian policy follows a more rigorous standard of consent. Until 2004, both Europe and the USA considered coded and linked anonymized samples—in which a code links the sample to its donor—as identifiable and therefore … [1]: /embed/graphic-1.gif

Eucast Technical Note on daptomycin

Eucast Technical Note on daptomycin

The Role of Transnational Committees in the European and Global Orders

Committees – i.e. transgovernmental and transnational bodies, composed of national officials, independent experts and/or interest representatives – are an important mechanism for accelerating negotiations in the European decision-making process. Substantial agreements are reached in specialized administrative colleges, which enjoy a heightened decision-making capacity. The European committees are thus essential tools for conflict prevention: they play a fundamental role in reconciling potentially conflicting national and supranational interests. Can the same be said of global committees? Are they similarly efficient in generating consensual decisions and reconciling the interests of the member States? The answer advanced in the paper is grounded on a comparison of structural and functional elements. The organizational models characteristic of the global committees largely correspond to those of the European system. Still, the relevant structural difference lies in their composition: while in the European Union the (transgovernmental) committees are all plenary, being composed of delegations of all Member States, in the universal organizations, by contrast, plenary committees are the exception. This organizational difference is reflected on the functional dimension: both European and global committees perform an essentially decisional activity, but global committees' efficiency (or productivity) and effectiveness (measurable in terms of member States' compliance) are relatively compromised by their (mainly) non-plenary composition. This is probably one of the reasons why effective problem-solving is greater in the European Union than in other international organizations.

Sjeldne fugler i Norge i 2004 - Rapport fra Norsk sjeldenhetskomité for fugl (NSKF)

This is the 29th annual report and the 30th announcement from the Norwegian Rarities Committee (NSKF). The majority of records treated here are from 2004, but some older records are also included. Norway follows taxonomic advises given by the Taxonomic Advisory Committee (TAC) in the Association of European Rarity Committees (AERC). The systematic list of accepted records is set out in the following system: (1) The birds Norwegian name, (2) scientific name, (3) the numbers in brackets, e.g. (30/32 - 1), refers respectively to the total number of records/total number of individuals up to and including 2003, and in 2004, (4) any limitations given of (3), (5) any breeding, (6) year, (7) county, (8) number of individuals, age (1K = first calendar year etc.), sex (if known) and sometimes circumstances (&laquo;rm&raquo; means that the bird was ringed), (9) site and municipality, (10) date, (11) * indicates if the record was complemented by positive evidence, and type of the evidence (F = photo, V = video-recorded, L = tape-recorded, D = found dead), (12) observers names in brackets, main observer is specified first and emphasized with *, (13) roughly gives the species distribution and (14) comments concerning the records.General trends:2004 was one of the best years in the history of NSKF, With 223 accepted records. 76 accepted records from previous years help to complete the Norwegian Bird list. There are 22 records presented that have been shelved. Half of these are concerning first year &laquo;Eastern Yellow Wagtails&raquo;. This is due to the lack of identification knowledge in the literature for such birds. Also presented are 47 records that for some reason have not been accepted. The records from 2004 shows few extraordinary trends, maybe except for a smaller influx of Sabine&rsquo;s Gulls (16 records). It was the second best year for Green-winged Teal Anas carolinensis (10 records) and the best year for Bee-eater Merops apiaster (7 records) and Caspian Gull Larus cachinnans (4 records). Other records of interest are Norway&rsquo;s fourth Short-toed Eagle Circaetus gallicus, sixth Gull-billed Tern Sterna niloctia, fifth Pallid Swift Apus pallidus, second White-winged Lark Melanocorypha leucoptera and second Eastern Bonelli&rsquo;s Warbler Phylloscopus orientalis. Five records of White-winged Black Tern Chlidonias leucopterus and two records of Whites Thrush Zootera dauma are also more than normal.New species to the Norwegian list:There are a total of five new species to the Norwegian category A list presented in this report, all from 2004. This brings the official Norwegian Bird list to 471 species. Included in this list are accepted records in category A-C. The new species are Baird&rsquo;s Sandpiper Calidris bairdii, Bridled Tern Sterna anaetheus, Thick-billed Warbler Acrocephalus aedon, Eastern Olivaceous Warbler Hippolais pallida and Eastern Orphean Warbler Sylvia crassirostris.

The Islam in Europe Committee

The Islam in Europe Committee

Développement de l’Eurocode 7 « calcul géotechnique »

L’Eurocode 7 sur le calcul géotechnique est constitué de deux parties : les règles générales (partie 1) et la reconnaissance des terrains et les essais géotechniques (partie 2). Les normes expérimentales européennes (ENV) correspondantes sont parues dans les années 90. Leur conversion en normes européennes à part entière (EN) est maintenant pratiquement terminée. La partie 1 a été ratifiée et publiée en novembre 2004. En ce qui concerne la partie 2, il est prévu que le texte final soit disponible au début de 2006. Après une note historique et le rappel des échéances prévues, la présente communication donne le contenu, ainsi que les aspects principaux des deux normes. On décrit certains aspects d’intérêt particulier (valeurs caractéristiques, valeurs dérivées, vérifications des états limites ultimes pour les situations de projet durables et transitoires). Enfin, la liaison avec les travaux d’autres comités techniques Européens et internationaux dans le domaine géotechnique est résumée.