EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides addressed for the first time the concerns among EU lawmakers and health stakeholders about a planned €1 billion cut in the EU’s main funding programme for health, saying a comprehensive assessment was still needed. 

Slashing €1 billion, the equivalent of almost 20%, off the €5.3 billion EU4Health programme means some “difficult political decisions” will need to be made, Kyriakides told members of the European Parliament’s environment and public health committee (ENVI) on Monday evening (11 March).

“It’s going to be premature to quantify the exact effects of this budget cut across the different strands of work,” she told MEPs.

“We need to be very meticulous. We need to scrutinise this. We need to conduct a very comprehensive assessment. We need to prioritise the initiatives that address immediate health concerns,” she continued.

“It’s going to be very important for us (…) to foster and to maximise all synergies with all the other relevant union funds” such as Horizon Europe and the Digital Europe programme, Kyriakides said.

EU leaders decided to cut the main health funding programme at a summit on 1 February as they chose to redeploy €10.6 billion sourced from a number of different EU programmes in the EU’s 2021-2027 budget to finance an aid plan for Ukraine.

Health stakeholders and MEPs alike were shocked at the health cuts. Nevertheless, the MEPs gave the reallocation the go-ahead during the Parliament’s plenary on 27 February.

The EU4Health 2024 work programme will remain unchanged. However, according to Kyriakides, the tough decisions on the 2025 programme will be made later this year.

After calling the cut a “significant decrease”, Kyriakides maintained that a “very significant budget” remains in place.

“Our commitment to deploy all possible means to reinforce health care in the EU could not be stronger, and we will do everything possible to limit the impact of this redeployment on our priorities,” Kyriakides told MEPs on the ENVI committee.

The EU4Health programme already saw a significant cut during the budget negotiations in 2020, when the Commission’s initial proposal to allocate €9.4 billion was almost cut in half, leaving the final 2021-2027 budget at €5.3 billion – still a historically large sum for EU health priorities.

Future priorities to be determined

The increased ambitions on health include many different priorities.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of EU funds were allocated to health emergency prevention, preparedness and response, particularly through the new EU Health Emergency and Response Authority (HERA).

Then there is the implementation of a range of new, revised or upcoming health legislation, including rules on substances of human origin, medical devices, health technology assessment, the European Health Data Space (EHDS), and the EU pharmaceutical legislation revision.

Priorities in Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan from 2021 and the EU Global Health Strategy from 2022 have also been pushed through in recent years, with the former being particularly important to the current Commission.

During the meeting on Monday, several MEPs on the ENVI committee expressed concern that the cuts would symbolise a lack of commitment towards health priorities in the eyes of EU citizens. Many asked Kyriakides for more clarity on health priorities or concrete steps for keeping health high on the agenda.

However, there were no concrete answers.

“I’m not in a position to give you details now but I can assure you of one thing: We’ll be working closely with member states and the EU Parliament. So while working through next year’s programme, I will be back to discuss the different priorities with you,” Kyriakides assured MEPs.

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]

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