Submitted by Political Commission 2: Internal European Affairs.
Adopted by the Federal Committee in Prague on 13 November 2022.
Re-adopted by the Federal Committee in Sofia on 30 March 2025.

The European Health Union provides a framework for building on the lessons of the pandemic as well as on other issues challenging the national and subnational health systems, encourages European and international collaboration in the field of health, and helps the European Union in preparing European-level health solutions and delivering them to the benefit of the EU citizens, leaving no one behind.
Amongst others, the Covid-19 pandemic revealed what has gone amiss in recent years: there is a greater need for collaborating on issues regarding health and well-being across our whole continent and the world.

JEF Europe,

• Recalling article 25 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) that states that “everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control” and that “motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection”;
• Recalling the preamble of the Constitution of the World Health Organization (WHO), which in particular states in its first clause that: “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”;
• Recognizing the importance of The European Pillar of Social Rights, in particular the Chapter III: “Social protection and inclusions”;
• Recognising the importance and peculiarity of the European models as an example of universal welfare;
• Concerned that Member States and regions have reduced the capacities of the social and health sector across Europe during the Great Financial Crisis of 2009, decreasing consistently the access and the quality of public services, with a consequent exacerbation of the inequalities, and, recently, leading Europe to face the pandemic with already existing staff and medical supply shortages – such as basic medicines and equipment, personal protective medical equipment, hospital beds etc.;
• Aware that the demographic changes of an ageing society and decreasing birth-rates will have even deeper consequence on the access and quality of public social and health services;
• Deploring that the level of quality of the public health system still varies largely on our continent, depending on location, socio-economic situation, environmental conditions as well as the existence of barriers to access health care, as exemplified by the stark contrast of cancer screening rates which reach 77.3% in Finland and only 8.1% in Hungary (8.1%) according to data by the European Commission (2022);
• Welcoming the EU4Health programme, which provides €5.3 billion over the period from 2021 to 2027 as a first step towards a true European Health Union and also welcoming the fact that Ukrainian NGOs can also apply for these funds;
• Strongly recalling that the European project was founded on the principle of solidarity as enshrined in the Treaties;
• Recalling that, according to Art. 168 of the Treaty on the functioning of the European Union,, the European Union shall support and complement national policies with regards to public health and, therefore, the EU’s ability to respond in the field of public health is limited;
• Reiterating WHO’s call to European authorities that the time is “now” to invest in healthcare systems and its workforce;
• Recalling JEF Europe’s previous resolutions on the issuance of joint debt and other mechanisms for ensuring direct revenues for a Federal Europe, such as “A Federal Budget for the European Youth: Reforming the Multiannual Financial Framework” and “On the creation of a Fiscal Union in the Eurozone”;
• Looking positively upon the European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) and the benefits it already gives to patients seeking emergency health care abroad, even though it does not cover the situation where a patient travels abroad with the purpose to get medical treatment;
• Recalling the direct victims of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, numbering an estimated more than 1 million deaths for EU / EEA countries alone and many cases of long Covid, as well as the indirect victims, namely patients needing care for other diseases who were not able to get the care they needed during the pandemic;
• Recognising that infectious diseases such as Covid-19 or Monkeypox are transnational threats that demonstrate the inadequacy of a purely national response towards transnational catastrophes, which could be better dealt with by federal institutions;
• Recalling that, beyond pandemics from infectious diseases, there are other transnational threats to health, such as fallout from major industrial accidents with the spread of harmful substances or radiation or the intentional use of ABC weapons by states or other violent actors;
• Considering that solidarity showed by some European countries during the Covid-19 pandemic was laudable, but strongly convinced that we can not rely on solidarity to face crises, and that therefore institutional solutions are needed to prevent and mitigate health shocks;
• Recognising the efforts made by expanding the EU’s competencies in the field of health care in the context of the Covid-19 crisis, namely in the functioning of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), in the timely and joint procurement of personal protective equipment (PPE) and vaccines, as well as in the setting up of Directorate-General European Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA);
• Recalls the goals under the Pact for the Future, adopted by the United Nations, especially the commitment to accelerate the efforts to ensure that all young people enjoy the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, including immunizations and vaccinations and sexual and reproductive health, and address all the challenges faced by developing countries in achieving these goals;
• Concerned about the low vaccine coverage in certain areas, related to issues with vaccine availability, communication and public distrust, etc., not only hindering the mitigation of Covid-19, but occasionally also leading to the re-emergence of other severe vaccine-preventable diseases, such as polio, tuberculosis, measles and some vaccine-preventable cancers;
• Welcoming the economic response with the Next Generation EU package and the fact that it is the first example of jointly-issued European debt;
• Concerned by the fact that all measures going in the direction of further European integration were only made possible because of the Covid-19 crisis;
• Disappointed that certain actions undertaken by the EU, such as the implementation of Next Generation EU took a long time to materialise, due to the inefficiency and undemocratic functioning of the European Council, thus paralysing the EU at a moment when action was important;
• Worried by the acceleration of climate change and the impacts it has on human health and on the environment;
• Recognising, according to the One Health principle, “that the health of humans, domestic and wild animals, plants, and the wider environment (including ecosystems) are closely linked and interdependent”;
• Welcoming the European Green Deal as the first attempt to give a European answer to reducing carbon emissions with the aim to improve the quality of the environment and to allow residents to live healthier lives;
• Stressing the importance of involving regional and local administrations in the planning and management of emergency services and proximity healthcare attention;
• Deploring the COVID-19 vaccination campaign that highlighted a real division between rich and less developed countries, showcasing the paradox of a globalised world that is not equitable, lacks a government and yet is increasingly connected;
• Believing that the recent Covid-19 pandemic showed the limits of the World Health Organisation (WHO), especially with regard to its lack of resources and problems in the intergovernmental decision-making;
• Also recognising, again, the limits of an intergovernmental approach compared to a federal system when having to respond to such pan-European or global threats quickly, efficiently and above all for the common interest;

JEF Europe therefore,

On the European level,

1. Supports measures ensuring access to treatments in every country with the European Union regulations and directives that are in place and solving issues related to segregation and denial of access to health;

2. Urges the European Union to act in other relevant areas necessary for a fully fledged Health Union such as:
   i) EU pharmaceuticals legislation,
   ii) access to medicines,
   iii) mental health and well-being,
   iv) European health data space,
   v) training of health professionals,
   vi) access to appropriate technologies,
   vii) the climate change and other environmental effects on health and well-being,
   viii) other topics of public health interest;

3. Calls for EU-wide implementation of the commitments under the Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan;

4. Underlines the need for research and development, with the necessary precautions, in the area of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare, while ensuring universal healthcare coverage;
   Supports measures in the area of digitalisation, information security, and interoperability, including, but not limited to, access to information, health recipes and services recognition and use, patient files, and others;

5. Calls for delivering appropriate solutions for the application of patients’ rights not only in the national context, but also in cross-border healthcare, within the applicable legal framework;

6. Asking for a reform of the Treaty on the functioning of the European Union in order to enable a more integrated European health crisis response, to offer the opportunity for European minimum standards on good-quality healthcare and also to safeguard the European Parliament’s involvement in decisions on European-level procurement of medical goods;

7. Encourages closer integration within the European Union in other relevant aspects related to the development of a fully fledged health union in the European Union, such as aspects related to digital interconnectivity, recognition of social security benefits, and urges the EU to better coordinate research on our continent, so as to avoid redundancies and optimise means to have the most impact;

8. Calls for actions by the EU to help the local and national actors – in the respect of subsidiarity – to align the level of public health as closely as possible to the highest standards currently existing in the EU as soon as possible and to improve the access to health care, in particular for underserved regions, people living in relative or absolute poverty and people with a migratory background;

9. Applauds the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) for its monitoring of the Covid-19 pandemic and vaccination campaign and calls upon the ECDC to replicate the effort made for tracking Covid-19 vaccination for other diseases, in line with the highest international standards and the applicable law;

10. Calls for all the Schengen members to better coordinate responses to health emergencies to avoid restrictions to the functioning of the Schengen Area, especially in border regions, unless these closures are required for public health reasons and in time-delimited consultations with European Union institutions;

11. Calls for longer-term economic recovery responses to health emergencies to improve the resilience of affected communities to future emergencies as well as be sustainable and socially just; in this respect, underlines the obligations of the Member States under the National Resilience and Recovery Plans, within the framework of Next Generation EU;

12. Strongly emphasises the importance of implementation of checks and balances in order to maintain the full functioning of the democratic institutions at all federal levels in times of crisis;

13. Calls for the EU to facilitate cross-border treatments and to establish a permanent home for a European Hospital and Medical Research Institute focused on both treating and researching the rarest and most complex surgical and medical procedures;

14. Recommends to develop the EU Health Platform to integrate EU citizens, patients, researchers and health professionals;
    An online EU health card; drugs correspondences, combination risks, bills; local systems comprehension and language filters; online consultation; exam history; document request; health information, professional research tools and chats;
    The platform might include Electronic Health Records (EHRs), enable Patient Health Records (PHRs) through Health Management Information System (HMIS), and be transferable through Patient Accessible Health Record (PAEHR) and recommends, in these cases, following the highest standards in terms of cyber security;

15. Ask the EU to improve actions regarding challenges of mental health problems, particularly among youth, and to establish minimum access rights ensuring that patients receive the care they so urgently need;

16. Calls all Member States’ governments and the European Union institutions to ensure that migrants, asylum-seekers, refugees and other people held in facilities financed by local, sub-national, national and European institutions, directly or indirectly, who are especially vulnerable, are able to receive the care they need in clean and hygienic facilities, and urges EU and independent external stakeholders to support and control that these standards are upheld;

17. Advocates for broader health literacy, addressing all generations, by improving education on prevention and on science-based solutions to health care problems, such as, but not limited to, vaccination;

18. Calls for the funding of the European-level measures to come from a European budget that is replenished by own resources rather than Member State contributions;

19. In the medium-term, calls for the European Health Union to be a coordinating factor of innovating healthcare amidst the changes outlined above with the goal to deliver quality public healthcare, accessible and either affordable or free to all living in the Union;

20. In the long-term, calls for a health union that represents the comprehensive health policy of a federal Europe, spearheaded by a Minister of Health, supported by their services European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, European Medicines Agency, and The European Commission’s Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority;

21. Strongly believes that the only way to guarantee and improve the European models of welfare, in order to guarantee social justice and high standards of healthcare for everyone, is to advance the European integration process towards a European Federation, equipped with its own fiscal resources and fully democratic institutions;

22. Calls for an integrated and coordinated approach to medical education and human capital management in the healthcare sector across member states to ensure proper staffing in all the regions;

23. Calls for the EU to make joint procurement of medical equipment and medicine for maintaining a common emergency stock of medicine and medical equipment that be distributed in an equitable manner among member states in case of supply difficulties.

On the global level,

1. Calls for the strengthening of research into the impact of climate change on health, including, amongst others, zoonotic diseases, as well as for a better and earlier detection of diseases through improved diagnostics made accessible to all countries;

2. Notices with disappointment that governments did not significantly reallocate funding to implement the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with a consequent lack in the resources and therefore asks for fully replenishing Global Funds on Climate and Health, boosting funding for education and other Sustainable Development Goals, and supporting innovative forms of financing like Social Impact Bonds;

3. Calls for giving more competences and resources to the World Health Organisation to enhance its effectiveness in preventing and mitigating health emergencies and in reducing the inequalities in the health care systems around the world, for instance making the vaccines more equitably manufactured and distributed around the world;

4. Advocates for federal reform of the multilateral institutions, in particular the UN, including through the creation of a world parliament, based on the principles of subsidiarity, democracy, and the rule of law, to address the interconnected challenges of a globalised world, such as climate change, minimum level of life and health condition and peace.