Commission boasts EU’s health achievements as more work beckons

4 months ago 23

‘The European Health Union: Acting together for people’s health’ is how the Commission summed up its last five years of actions in health. The EU went “from firefighter to architect”, in the words of Commission Vice President Margaritis Schinas, but not everyone is convinced the current architecture is optimal.

The Communication presented on Wednesday evening (22 May) provided an overview of the EU’s actions during this five-year term, ahead of June’s EU elections.

The Health Union, originally presented as the key to better preparedness for health emergencies has become the overarching name given to all health measures taken by the EU, from the Beating Cancer Plan to the first comprehensive approach to mental health.

Schinas, who attended the presentation, recalled how the COVID-19 pandemic gripped Europe in 2020, only a few months after the new Commission took office.

“I could not have imagined that health issues would take such a pivotal [role] after just three months. We were faced with the most unprecedented health emergency since [the flu pandemic of] 1918.”

Schinas said that with its actions the EU moved from being a side actor to a global player in health.

The EU responded to the pandemic by creating the EU Vaccine Strategy and the Digital COVID Certificate, which set a global standard for mobility, and took the lead globally as the founder and largest donor to COVAX, helping low-income countries outside Europe access vaccines.

Apart from health measures, the EU stepped up its health funding through the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RFF) with €43 billion allocated to health-related measures, the programme to address unemployment risks (SURE) and the EU4Health programme, which remains the largest and most ambitious EU health programme the EU has ever had, according to Kyriakides.

A house built on sound foundations?

Schinas pointed to the different ways the EU has strengthened its ability to respond to health threats, in particular, through the creation of HERA, the EU’s Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority.

However, stakeholders have already pointed to the need to do more on health.

Professor Peter Piot, the special adviser to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on European health acknowledged the enormous progress made but warned of an urgent need to clarify and simplify the governance of preparedness in Europe, which he described as “quite Babylonic”.

Addressing a conference on the Future of the EU Health Union on 27 March, Piot also suggested that the work on medical countermeasures (MCM) and public health measures, such as maintaining social distance, masking and lockdowns, should also be addressed in a more coordinated manner.

In response to a question from Euractiv, Schinas said it was not the role of Brussels to assume the responsibility for “national operational questions”, but stressed that the EU did provide a format for states to exchange information on their approaches.

Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides added that the EU does have a role to play in providing credible scientific recommendations.

“Citizens need to know that they have credible information because I would remind you about the large amount of fake news over the first six months [of the pandemic].”

Looking ahead

The communication also underlined threats that must not be ignored, ranging from antimicrobial resistance to climate change-induced health threats.

The paper steered away from controversy and did not touch on the issues that have not yet been resolved in this mandate, such as the pharmaceutical legislation package, or work on health determinants such as tobacco and alcohol labelling.

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]