Your AccountUrgent call for a Ringfenced, Standalone Health Budget for Europe
07.11.2025COVID-19 taught us a powerful lesson: without health, there is no resilience, no productivity, no future. Yet as the EU prepares its next seven-year budget framework, health risks being sidelined once again. Currently, health policy remains fragmented across multiple EU portfolios, leaving millions of people living with chronic neurological conditions like MS, NMO, and MOGAD facing deep inequalities in access to care and treatment.
The evidence from the MS Barometer 2020 is stark: only half of European countries provide structured multidisciplinary care pathways, and fewer than one in three have effective employment support policies – despite MS predominantly affecting people during their working years. These deep inequalities in diagnosis, treatment, and care persist across Member States not by chance, but as the direct result of fragmented, short-term health investment.
A Better Path Forward
These gaps aren’t inevitable. A robust standalone EU health budget would:
- Ensure public health needs guide investment decisions, not market forces
- Enable long-term planning in prevention and care
- Strengthen solidarity across Member States
- Rebuild citizens’ trust in the European project
EMSP, together with the European Federation of Neurological Associations and partner organizations across Europe, is calling on the European Commission to establish a dedicated health budget – one that puts patient needs first, not competing economic agendas.
