Subject: Reply to your letter on the preliminary Opinion on Potential Health Effects of Exposure to Electromagnetic Fields (EME)
I am replying to your letter of 7 March 2014 addressed to Mr. Ladislav Miko and Mr. Robert Vanhoorde, as it is my Unit which provides the secretariat to the Scientific Committees, I would like to thank you and the Bioinitiative Working Group for participating in the ongoing public consultation on electromagnetic fields and potential health effects thus showing interest for the work carried out by the European Union in this particular field. Please allow me to clarify the procedures in place for this public consultation. You mention that there is limited space to express your comments on the on-line form. Please note that there are 2500 characters for each ehapter ‘subchapter of the form used for the public consultation, which reflect the list of contents of the preliminary opinion. In total, the system allows you to comment on some 90 different chapters/subchapters, and for each of these you can add an unlimited number of files of maximum 1 Mb each. However, if you still feel that you need more space, you can send additional comments to
.
I would also like to draw your attention to the fact that, due to the complexity of this preliminary opinion and our commitment to engage in an open dialogue with relevant stakeholders, we decided to prolong the period of public consultation by four weeks. This preliminary opinion was published on the 4th of February and will remain open until the 16th of April 2014 (normally preliminary opinions remain open for public consultation for only six weeks).
With regard to your comment about the limited time given to each scientist registered to speak in the public hearing, the two minutes slot is due to the large number of participants who have registered for this event and the need to ensure equal treatment to each speaker.
At the moment we have some 70 participants, each of them has the right to at least introduce himself/ herself and present his/her scientific contribution. This accounts for 2.5 hours without considering SCENIHR experts’ reply (if needed).
If some participants decide not to take the floor, we will adjust the schedule accordingly and will allow more time to all the participating speakers.
We look forward to receiving your comments on the preliminary opinion and to meeting you in Athens at the public hearing.
Yours sincerely,
Stefan Schreck
Head of Unit