During the last mandate, the EU's work on health policy took off with the COVID-19 pandemic and the European Health Data Space. Euronews spoke to the EPP's coordinator for public health in the Parliament about the next challenges. Health needs to remain a priority at the European level, the MEP who led on the European Health Data Space has told Euronews in an interview in which he flagged the need for common action to improve the early detection and prevention of diseases and development of new medicines.
“Before the previous mandate, before the Europe Beating Cancer Plan and before COVID-19, healthcare was a marginal topic in the European institutions,” MEP Tomislav Sokol (Croatia/European Popular Party) said. He added that the pandemic and the shortages of medicines the EU has experienced in the last few years have shown that member states cannot resolve all healthcare issues alone. Sokol was the lead MEP on the European Health Data Space, which established a common European framework for sharing health data and negotiated on behalf of the EPP the revision of the bloc's pharmaceutical legislation - a file that caused some controversy last year and is set to be one of the most complex topics in the next mandate.
After the Commission’s proposal was presented in April 2023, the European Parliament agreed on its position a year later, in a final sprint from the chamber to secure a position before the European elections in June 2024. The Croatian MEP, however, added that t.