EU4Health - the European Union’s action programme in the field of health

Focal areas

The focal areas of EU4Health include the following:

• Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and protecting the Union’s population from severe cross-border health threats, including strengthening the resilience of national healthcare systems and supporting measures to stockpile crisis-relevant products;
• Europe's Beating Cancer Plan;
• Digitalisation in the area of health and creating a uniform European healthcare data space;
• Health promotion and disease prevention in the field of communicable and non-communicable diseases;
• Improving access to high-quality healthcare;
• Cooperation at international level, above all supporting World Health Organization (WHO) measures.

Implementation

In cooperation with the Member States, every year the European Commission adopts work programmes to implement EU4Health. Measures can be funded in accordance with the respective work programme. These measures must possess an added value at European level, which is why national measures cannot be funded through EU4Health. The European Commission issues a call for tender to implement these measures. The EU4Health Programme distinguishes between the following funding instruments:

• Firstly, “action grants” that are available to interested parties through open calls for proposals and procurement to provide services through open calls for tender;
• Secondly, “direct grants” that are directed at the Member States (i.e. generally their health ministries) are awarded without a call for tender either in form of “Joint Actions” (a collaborative project involving several Member States) or “other direct grants” (where one or more identified Member States each implement their projects on their own).

The specific funding requirements can be found in the relevant call for tender. The 2025 work programme was adopted on 23 July 2025. The draft 2026 work programme has been submitted to the programme committee for voting and adoption. It is not yet clear how long it might take until the work programme is adopted.

For further information, please contact the EU4Health National Contact Point (German).