Health is a priority for Europeans, and therefore for the European Union. We expect to be protected against illness and disease. We want to bring up our children in a healthy environment. We are entitled to a safe and hygienic workplace. When travelling within the European Union, we need access to reliable and high-quality health advice and assistance.
Each EU country is free to decide on the health policies best suited to national circumstances and traditions, but they all share common values. These include the right of everyone to the same high standards of public health and equity in access to quality health care. So it makes sense to work together on common challenges, ranging from ageing populations to obesity. The EU is also committed to taking the implications for health into account in all its policies.
The EU promotes healthier eating.
Moreover, diseases know no borders, particularly in a globalised world where many of us travel widely. Joint action adds value when facing potential threats such as influenza epidemics or bioterrorism. It is also equally logical that the EU has common standards on safe food and nutrition labelling, the safety of medical equipment, blood products and organs, and the quality of air and water.
To meet the common challenges, the EU is spending more than €50m annually on activities to improve our health security, to promote good health – including reducing inequalities, and to provide more information and knowledge on health. The money goes on a wide range of issues, including planning for health emergencies, patient safety and reducing injuries and accidents.
There is also funding to promote better nutrition and safe consumption of alcohol, healthy lifestyles and healthy ageing, to combat consumption of tobacco and drugs, to prevent major diseases including HIV/Aids and tuberculosis, and to exchange knowledge in areas such as gender issues, children’s health and rare diseases.
Activities to combat drug use can draw on the expertise of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction in Lisbon. This provides the EU and its member states with objective, reliable and comparable information on drugs and drug addiction.
Public health policy ensures cosmetics are safe to use.
When a pandemic threatens, the EU draws up a coordinated response plan as it has done, for example, for avian influenza. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control headquartered in Stockholm pools and shares knowledge on current and emerging threats, and works with its national counterparts to develop Europe-wide disease surveillance and early warning systems. By having a central agency, the EU can respond quickly to threats. That can make the difference between a minor outbreak and a serious epidemic.
Environmental factors, largely pollution, cause between one quarter and one third of illness and disease in industrial countries. Children are particularly vulnerable. A strategy within the European Commission’s Environment and Health Action Plan is tackling the links between environmental factors and conditions such as asthma, allergies, respiratory diseases, cancer, and neuro-developmental disorders, such as autism and speech problems.
In addition, the EU is spending €6 billion on health research between 2007 and 2013 under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7). The money funds research into improvements in our health and at the same time boosts the competitiveness and innovative capacity of Europe’s health-related industries and businesses.
The emphasis is on translating basic discoveries into clinical applications, developing and validating new therapies, health promotion and prevention strategies, better diagnostic tools and medical technologies, and sustainable and efficient healthcare systems. Priority diseases include cancer, and cardiovascular, infectious, mental and neurological diseases, in particular those linked with ageing.
Being able to travel freely, or to live and work anywhere in the EU only makes sense if EU citizens can be sure of obtaining health care wherever they go. The European health insurance card makes it easier for holidaymakers and business travellers to claim their right to health care if they fall ill while in another member state – and in some other European countries as well. In addition, EU citizens are also entitled in certain circumstances to obtain treatment in any EU country of their choosing even when they are not on holiday.
