In Autumn this year the ITRE Committee (Industry, Research and Energy) of the European Parliament will vote the package of proposals for Horizon 2020, the EU’s new programme for research and innovation running from 2014 to 2020 with an €87 billion budget. Some major ethical problems remain and it appears that on many aspects the new framework is even weaker than the current one. In … Continue reading »

How can we deal with patients in state of post-coma unresponsiveness? What are the prospects for human enhancement by technological means? How can we fight organ trafficking and transplant tourism? What exactly are sexual and reproductive health rights? These are very technical yet nevertheless crucial topics with which EU lawmakers are more and more confronted. In order to offer an insight into the ethical implications … Continue reading »

Human embryonic stem cell research is no longer patentable in the EU, it is ethically problematic and therefore is not a consensual research field among Member States and EU citizens. Moreover, it offers less and less clinical promise. COMECE therefore calls on the EU to exclude human embryonic stem cell research from its upcoming research funding programme Horizon 2020 and to focus instead on the … Continue reading »

COMECE welcomes the Judgement of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). In the Case Oliver Brüstle v Greenpeace, the ECJ, in a preliminary ruling, decided that destructive research on human embryo cannot be patented. In this context, the ECJ had to give a clear legal interpretation of the concept of “human embryo”. This concept remained not defined in Directive 98/44/EC. The Court now defines a … Continue reading »