From Our President: A New Budget – A New Reality
For months now, we’ve been awaiting it, debating it, and imagining what might be in it. Then, two weeks ago, we finally got to see it – the proposed EU budget: the new Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) covering 2028-2034.
I’ve pored over it many times, and I must confess that each reading leaves me disappointed. For decades, we struggled to make cancer control an EU priority. During the current budget period (2021-2027), we finally succeeded, with groundbreaking initiatives on cancer – namely Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan and the EU Mission on Cancer – being funded through the EU4Health programme and Horizon Europe. This has been a resounding success.
You might expect that we would build on that momentum, not bring it to a halt. Yet that is the possibility we now face.
The proposed new budget is worth nearly €2 trillion, but cancer is barely mentioned. So, where does this leave the many groundbreaking programmes already underway, programmes like the Comprehensive Cancer Care Networks? What will happen to them when the current financing runs out in 2027?
It's not that there is less money to spend. The proposed MFF is almost twice the size of the current one. But health – and within it, cancer – has been folded into a broader ‘competitiveness fund’, just one of many competing priorities. Can we really afford that?
Not when every minute, five people in Europe are diagnosed with this disease. Not when ten years from now, by all accounts, cancer will become the leading cause of death.
Cancer is a complex, multifaceted disease. It cannot be tackled with just six years of funding. Yet, even now, Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan is delivering financial return. Initial calculations I’ve seen suggest that for every euro invested in the Plan, we see €15 in savings. Getting more countries to implement effective screening programmes, for example, not only saves lives, it saves public money.
So, what’s next? We will have more than a year of negotiations among Member States to agree on the final MFF.
The outcome remains uncertain. What is clear is that we’re entering a different reality, one in which cancer must compete with a much larger pool of urgent priorities. Our task is to ensure it is not lost in the deliberations.
If there is a silver lining, it’s knowing that we have formidable allies for our advocacy work. Across the political spectrum, many MEPs have already voiced strong objections to the sidelining of healthcare in general – and cancer care in particular.
At last count, more than 125 MEPs and national politicians have expressed their support. These are our allies, our advocates – members of ECO’s National & European Parliamentarians for Cancer Action, launched in 2022. We also have the backing of the new European Parliament Intergroup, established earlier this year on World Cancer Day. And most importantly, we have the support of people across the EU who want the fight against cancer not only sustained but expanded.
The path forward is now clear: mount a broad-based, dynamic advocacy campaign. We must make the case – compellingly and consistently – to ensure fighting cancer remains an EU imperative.
We have our work cut out for us.
With best wishes,
Csaba
Prof. Csaba Dégi
