[Surveillance of infectious diseases at the EU level]

The basis for EU wide surveillance was Decision 2119/98/EC of the European Parliament and the Council in 1998. Since May 2005 it is the task of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control to coordinate and further develop this network. One key function of the ECDC is to standardise European surveillance and especially to harmonise the procedures of the surveillance networks that developed independently of each other. As a first step, the EU case definitions have been revised jointly with the Member States and the Commission. All surveillance networks are evaluated with a standard protocol before a decision is made at the ECDC on the continuation of the individual network activities. Simultaneously, the development of The European Surveillance System (TESSy) progressed. Since the beginning of 2008 data users have been trained and TESSy has been in use since April 2008. In the future the main focus must be the improvement of the quality and comparability of the data as such data are the essential prerequisite for decision making in public health.