EU4Health is the EU’s ambitious response to COVID-19. The pandemic has a major impact on patients, medical and healthcare staff, and health systems in Europe. The new EU4Health programme will go beyond crisis response to address healthcare systems’ resilience.
EU4Health, established by Regulation (EU) 2021/522, will provide funding to eligible entities, health organisations and NGOs from EU countries, or non-EU countries associated to the programme.
Areas of action
With EU4Health, the EU will invest €5.3 billion in current prices in actions with an EU added value, complementing EU countries’ policies and pursuing one or several of EU4Health´s objectives:
The 10 specific objectives under the 4 general goals are:
To improve and foster health in the Union
disease prevention & health promotion
international health initiatives & cooperation
To tackle cross-border health threats
prevention, preparedness & response to cross-border health threats
complementing national stockpiling of essential crisis-relevant products
establishing a reserve of medical, healthcare & support staff
To improve medicinal products, medical devices and crisis-relevant products
making medicinal products, medical devices and crisis-relevant products available and affordable
To strengthen health systems, their resilience and resource efficiency
strengthening health data, digital tools & services, digital transformation of healthcare
improving access to healthcare
developing and implementing EU health legislation and evidence-based decision making
integrated work among national health systems
EU4Health will pave the way to a European Health Union by investing in urgent health priorities:
the response to the COVID-19 crisis and reinforcing the EU’s resilience for cross-border health threats
the Pharmaceutical Strategy for Europe
Other areas, such as health systems’ digitalisation, reducing the number of antimicrobial-resistant infections and improving vaccination rates will also be boosted.
The EU will expand successful initiatives like the European Reference Networks for rare diseases and continue to pursue international cooperation on global health threats and challenges.
Information about other tools, previous programmes and synergies and complementarities with other funds can be found here,
