New statement release from Biomed Alliance
On 5th of May 2025, the EAU joined medical and patient organisations in urging the EU to maintain strong health funding in its post-2027 budget, warning that deprioritising health in favour of defence or AI threatens public well-being, health system resilience, and Europe’s innovation.
On 5 May 2025, EAU has joined forces with a number of medical and scientific organisations and patient organisations to make the case for preserved investment in health in the next EU multi-annual budget post 2027. Several members of the EAU Patient Advocacy Group have also endorsed the statement. The Biomed Alliance, an important umbrella organisation for EAU and other medical societies, has developed the strong position and message with support from its members such as the EAU and the European Cancer Organisation.
The aim is to protect health research and implementation science in the next EU funding period. The European Commission opened consultations on the new financial plans, with health largely missing from the planning. This joint response was added the EAU response to echo the shared concern that health should remain high on the EU funding agenda.
The structure of the consultations demonstrate a significant shift in prioritisation towards funding for Defence or AI, and competitiveness, with very limited mentioning of health in the current public consultations [1]. These priorities should not come at the expense of the health of European citizens. A strong and coordinated European health strategy is essential to enhance well-being of citizens, resilience of the health workforce, long-term sustainability of health systems and innovation and European competitiveness in the health field. Health is a pre-requisite and a building block required for other priorities and plans to flourish.
It seems that the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic are already starting to fade from our collective memory. The public health emergency that led to over 2 million deaths in the European region [2], demonstrated that health threats do not stop at borders and that a coordinated European approach and strong and sustained investment in health research do save lives. While the immediate crisis seems to have passed, we must continue to see health as a priority, in order to enhance resilience against current and emerging health threats such as antimicrobial resistance and potential future pandemics. At the same time, we should not restrict health funding to emergency preparedness, as different health problems are often interconnected. For instance, co-morbidities played an important role on the severity of COVID-infections in patients with underlying health problems [3]. Health should also be connected to other factors like the environment.
The EAU has responded to all of the public consultations on this issue, and will closely monitor the proposal from the Commission (expected in July 2025) and next steps in discussions with the European Parliament and EU member states together with the Biomed Alliance and other partners.
The BioMed Alliance has issued a new statement with a range of civil society organisations in the health field, expressing concerns regarding the potential cut of health funding in the next Multi-annual Financial Framework. This reduction could seriously impede the implementation of a strong and co-ordinated European Health Strategy, and could impact the well-being of citizens, the resilience of the health workforce and Europe’s innovation and competitiveness in the health field.
Healthcare professional organisations, patient organisations and other civil society organisations from the health field call on policy makers to not forget the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, and to not weaken their commitment to health and to preserve funding for key health policy and research funding instruments such as EU4Health and the Health Cluster in Horizon Europe.
The full statement from the Biomed Alliance can be read here.
[2] See WHO: https://www.who.int/europe/emergencies/situations/covid-19
[3] See Russel, Lone and Baillie in Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-02156-9
