The European Parliament’s Special Committee on Beating Cancer (BECA) discussed on Monday 10 May the issue of funding to support the EU’s ambitions in this area.
Four billion euros available under various European funding instruments will be allocated to actions to fight cancer, according to the European plan presented last February on this subject (see EUROPE 12650/1).
Half of this sum will come from Horizon Europe, the 2021-2027 programme for research and innovation (see EUROPE 12711/16). Up to 500 million euros could also be made available through the Erasmus+ programme as well as through calls for projects from the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) and individual Marie Skłodowska-Curie grants. And 250 million euros will be available under the Digital Europe programme.
“We will certainly need additional funding”, acknowledged Patrick Child, Head of Horizon Europe’s Cancer mission. “We will have to work with the regions, local entities and we will mobilise the private sector, even the charitable sector”, he said, assuring that non-profit organisations would play a key role in advancing cancer research.
1.25 billion euros should also be made available under the EU4Health programme, initiated in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic (see EUROPE 12494/5) and adopted at the end of March.
“These allocations are conditional on Member States agreeing to them”, John Ryan, Head of Unit for the European Commission’s department for Public Health and working group on cancer, reminded MEPs.
Asked what measures were most urgently needed, Mr Ryan said that it was a matter of talking to the Member States and securing their support. “We have already presented the ideas for the 2021 work plan”, he said of EU4Health, adding that he expected the first annual work plan to be adopted next month.
“We will have a meeting with stakeholders in the coming days to explain the funding possibilities” under this programme, he also stressed.
Two possibilities are foreseen by the programme. Grants allocated through calls for proposals, on one hand. And direct grants awarded without a call for proposals, on the other hand, to fund NGOs or European Reference Networks (ERNs), for example, “if these grants are duly justified”.
German MEP Manuela Ripa welcomed the fact that EU4Health also requires that at least 20% of the money available under the programme “be reserved for health promotion and disease prevention actions”.
Presenting early prevention as “the most cost-effective strategy to fight cancer”, she regretted that funding for such actions “represents only 3% of the Member States’ health budget”. (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)