The European Commission Health and Consumer Protection DG published a report outlining the results of its consultation on "Future challenges paper 2009-2014".

35 contributions were submitted and respondents stressed the importance of designing policies based on sound evidence, transparency, sustainable development and addressing health inequalities.

The paper aimed to answer the following questions:

1. What are some of the main challenges that our DG may face in the future?
2. How will the environment in which we operate evolve in the coming 10-20 years? For example: will consumers have confidence in what we purchase in a supermarket? Will consumers be increasingly looking for ethical or local products? Will citizens live longer and healthier? Will consumers spend even more time on the internet looking for information or making a purchase?
3. What are the different future scenarios? What does it mean for us? How should we prepare ourselves pro-actively?

Follow-up

The Commission intends to take the results into account when drafting a final version of the paper and developing projects.