MEPs are pushing for an EU solidarity mechanism to help patients pay for treatment abroad, arguing that financial barriers are preventing Europeans from exercising rights they have had on paper for more than a decade.
The calls came as Parliament discussed a report commissioned to inform its own-initiative report on modernising patients’ rights in cross-border healthcare. The study found that cross-border care accounts for just 0.004% of EU public health expenditure, despite patients continuing to face upfront costs, complex reimbursement procedures and prior-authorisation requirements.
Tomislav Sokol (EPP, Croatia) called the proposed solidarity mechanism a potential “game changer” for vulnerable patients, but challenged Parliament to spell out how it would work.
“How would it work in practice? How would it be financed? Would this be part of the EU budget?” Sokol asked. “We need to know it now, so that we can also use this in negotiations on the future EU budget, in the next MFF.”
In the news feeds, Libya and Sudan exist as separate storylines: one is remembered when the conversation turns to migrants, the other when bombs fall on Khartoum. Two wars. Two countries. Four thousand kilometers of coastline that never meet, and a thousand kilometers of shared desert that connects everything. On the map of real influence, […]
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