Neoliberal globalisation is producing radical transformations in health systems across the world.

In Europe , these changes centre on the privatisation and marketisation of health systems and a growth in the financial contributions expected of service users at the point of delivery.

Conscious that we face a general offensive which shares the same essential characteristics across different countries, a group of health care professionals and health policy analysts in Spain and the UK are setting up this Observatory, the objectives of which are to:

• Permit those campaigning to defend public health care systems overseas to learn about and learn from the experience of the UK.
• Permit campaigners overseas to translate and disseminate further articles and papers they believe useful in their domestic campaign.
• Establish further links between campaigners overseas and analysts and campaigners in the UK.
• In the longer run and where this is wanted, establish more extensive forms of collaboration between campaigners and analysts across Europe.

This initiative begins simply with this website which will hold a range of documents, including articles, briefing papers and reports, which reveal and analyse pro-privatisation and pro-marketisation health policies in European countries, above all in Spain and the UK.

Dr Sally Ruane
Health Policy Research Unit, Health and Life Sciences
De Montfort University, Hawthorn Building, The Gateway
Leicester
United Kingdom

Dr Marciano Sánchez Bayle
Federación de Asociaciones para la Defensa de la Sanidad Pública
Madrid
España