On Tuesday 8 February, the social democratic ministers of eleven Member States (Sweden, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Romania and Spain) issued a series of recommendations on how to improve Europeans’ access to affordable, quality health care, ahead of the informal meeting of EU health ministers in Grenoble on Wednesday 9 and Thursday 10 February.
In their joint declaration, the eleven ministers mention that the right to affordable, quality and timely preventive and curative health care for all was incorporated into the European Pillar of Social Rights in 2017. However, they regret that access to such care is compromised for many Europeans, due to various factors such as budgetary constraints or high medicine prices.
Welcoming the establishment of the HERA agency (see EUROPE 12857/9) and the role that the EMA (European Medicines Agency) will play in the future (see EUROPE 12822/1), the ministers mentioned several avenues for improving access to care. They call on the European Commission to facilitate joint procurement procedures for the purchase of medicines and medical equipment in times of crisis. They call on the EU to prioritise research based on medical and societal needs.
The signatories of the declaration want to put an end to the “trend towards austerity” and budget cuts in the health sector. They want to support the digitalisation of healthcare, encourage Member States to coordinate against antibiotic resistance, and to take into account the ‘One Health’ approach.
On the global stage, the ministers want the EU to step up the sharing of vaccines against Covid-19 and to become a driver for global health governance reform.
Link to the ministerial statement: https://aeur.eu/f/9f (Original version in French by Emilie Vanderhulst)