At a hearing of the European Parliament’s Committee on Budgetary Control (CONT), on Monday 12 January, the Commissioner for Health and Animal Welfare, Olivér Várhelyi, defended the European Commission’s health-related budgetary choices as the 2028-2034 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) takes shape.
Outlining the satisfactory implementation of the budget for 2024, the Commissioner confirmed the direction chosen by the European Commission, according to which health would no longer have an autonomous budgetary instrument, but would be integrated into the future European Competitiveness Fund.
A specific window of €22.6 billion would be devoted to health and biotechnologies, supplemented by €20 billion from the future Horizon Europe programme.
When asked about the consequences of this organisation, Olivér Várhelyi justified it in terms of the need to link health, innovation and industrial sovereignty more closely. In particular, he cited the ‘Critical Medicines Act’ proposed by the Commission on 11 March 2025 (see EUROPE 13597/18) as a response to shortages and the European Union’s dependence on external value chains.
In the absence of new financial margins within the current framework, the initiative relies mainly on non-budgetary instruments such as joint purchasing, demand pooling and a relaxation of State aid rules allowing Member States to grant public subsidies and financial guarantees to projects to relocate the production of medicines and active ingredients within Europe.
Several MEPs nevertheless questioned the risk of a reduced capacity to define, monitor and evaluate distinct European health priorities, already weakened by the 20% reduction in the EU4Health programme at the end of the period.
The Commissioner endorsed these budgetary options. He went on to say that financial constraints are leading the Commission to use budgetary instruments common to several policies, rather than separate programmes.
With regard to the funding of NGOs, he confirmed that operating subsidies would be abandoned in favour of project-based funding, which was presented as being more compatible with the new budgetary logic.
This choice illustrates a trend whereby, according to the Commission’s proposal in the 2028-2034 Multiannual Financial Framework (see EUROPE 13682/1), health policy would be funded mainly through instruments dedicated to industrial competitiveness, research and innovation. (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)