Debate: Programme for the Union’s action in the field of health for the period -
Date: TUESDAY, 9 MARCH 2021
Speaker: Cristian-Silviu Buşoi
Country: Poland
Language: EN

For these, I would like to take the opportunity to thank Commissioner Kyriakides and President von der Leyen for putting the proposal to have a stand-alone programme forward. I would also like to thank Director-General Gallina and Director Hudson for their support and excellent advice. Furthermore, we would not have succeeded in finishing the negotiations last year without the strong involvement of Minister Jens Spahn and the support and work of the German Presidency.  I would also like to take the opportunity to thank my colleagues, the shadow rapporteurs, for their work, and all colleagues who contributed with amendments and involvement for their support and collaboration. And a special thanks to Peter Liese and PPE colleagues. Together we have achieved not only to amend, vote, debate, negotiate in less than half a year the fourth programme in the field of health, but have also secured a very important budget of EUR 5.1 billion.  EU4Health will stand as the fourth health programme of the Union as a separate instrument for the 2021—2027 period and compared to the third programme for health, EU4Health will deliver on many more actions to support Member States in the field of health and complement their efforts in reforming their systems to become more resilient.  What are the main objectives? The EU4Health programme is more than just a response to the COVID-19 crisis. It will deliver not only on short-term crisis management but also on long-term objectives. EU4Health will strengthen the European Union’s fight against cancer, a very important priority for me personally and for my political group the PPE, but also for so many colleagues, with concrete actions to address the lack of screening, early diagnosis and access to treatment and care, and in synergy with the Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan.  EU4Health will digitalise healthcare, in particular through the creation and application of the European e-health record, and support the creation and use of the health data space future platform. EU4Health will work in synergies with other programmes, instruments and funds. The Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan, Horizon Europe and its specific mission for cancer, the Digital Agenda and the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF).  EU4Health will encourage Member States to invest more in health promotion and disease prevention, especially for chronic diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and will focus on a very important medium-term objective – and for me, representing Romania, this is extremely important – that health inequalities must be reduced. Despite all the efforts done and made by the EU in the past few years and the progress made on health status and life expectancy, there is still unequal access to health services at EU level, and some of these inequalities are widening not only across countries, but also across population groups within each country. EU4Health will support actions for training more health staff, address resistance to vaccination in the EU, and bring back the production of medicines to Europe. EU4Health will allocate funds for the establishment of a Union reserve of essential crisis-relevant products and of medical and healthcare staff in synergy and complementarity with other Union policies and instruments.  The final agreement introduced also ceilings: a minimum for health promotion and disease prevention: 20%; a ceiling for stockpiling: 12.5%; for procurement complementing national stockpiling of essential crisis-relevant products; one for global commitments and initiatives: 12.5%; and the last one for administrative expenses: 8%. And this is something that the European Parliament insisted on in order to ensure a fair balance and to have a very good budget which is going in the right direction. I would like to once again emphasise that this programme will be extremely important to deliver on what will be our future challenges – cancer, communicable and non-communicable diseases, antimicrobial resistance, mental health and ageing, vaccine hesitancy, unequal access – and we’d like to reduce inequalities, medicine shortages, and, of course, at the same time, we will be better prepared with the help of this programme for emerging technologies.  Dear colleagues, thank you very much. Together, we have delivered both on citizens’ expectations and on addressing the challenges we are facing.