The measure would have to have been approved before July 23; However, it was not until this Monday, and in an extraordinary plenary session convened “with haste”, when the Interterritorial Council of the National Health System has given green light to the modification of Royal Decree 579/2017 in order to transpose the Directive 2022/2100, which regulates various aspects related to heated tobacco and which involves the withdrawal of certain exceptions applicable to these products. Everything indicates that this regulation will receive the approval of the acting Council of Ministers this Tuesday.
Sources close to the Interterritorial Council consulted by this newspaper point out that the meeting, held electronically, has been called in haste and with hardly any time to prepare it. This is the first Interterritorial Council held after the new regional Health officials took office after the regional elections on May 28.
Fatima Matute, Minister of Health of the Community of Madrid, has been one of the critical voices with this meeting “called too hastily” and without time “to prepare certain current topics.” “It was due to the need not to lose finalist funds from the ministry and, obviously, so that Europe did not sanction us, since it was necessary to approve the transposition of the Royal Decree in relation to tobacco and heated tobacco products,” explained the Madrid official after finishing the meeting.
And the thing is that on the agenda of this meeting, to which this media has had access, in addition to the modification of the RD that Matute has pointed out, there were the approvals of different fund distribution agreements to the autonomous communities and cities corresponding to the 2023 budget year (strategies against rare diseases and neurodegenerative diseases, improvement of the SNS Information System, expansion of the common portfolio of oral health services in the health system…).
In addition to addressing the issues on the agenda, several Health ministries have expressed proposals and requests to the acting Executive during the meeting. In the case of La Rioja, the Minister of Health and Social Policies, Maria Martinhas demanded that the Government “defend the equity and national cohesion” of the current specialized health training system in the face of the possible transfer of powers for the management of this training to the autonomous communities.