The Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan adds real momentum to the fight against cancer, promising to reduce the burden of disease, tackle inequality and accelerate advances in personalised medicines.

The Plan is a key pillar for the European Health Union besides the Pharmaceutical Strategy for Europe, which aims to ensure the availability of safe and affordable medicines to patients across the EU. In setting up the Plan, the European Commission took a multi-stakeholder approach and an extensive consultation process to prepare the plan.

Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan is structured around ten flagship initiatives and a number of supporting actions along the entire disease pathway: 1.) prevention; 2.) early detection; 3.) diagnosis and treatment; 4.) quality of life of cancer patients and survivors.

The Plan represents a new era for cancer care with the potential to have a major positive impact on Europe’s citizens. Its success will require broad political support, continued investment, and new initiatives to boost innovation. This will improve the lives of today’s cancer sufferers – and tomorrow’s patients. 

We welcome the decision to connect the EU Beating Cancer Plan with the Horizon Europe Mission on Cancer. The EFPIA Oncology Platform has welcomed the work done by the Mission Board.

Together, patients, citizens, EU institutions, academia, and industry in Europe can lead the way in understanding cancer and collectively find a way to tackle it. Through strong partnerships and collaborations, we can deliver more for cancer patients, more for citizens, and more for Europe.

The EFPIA Oncology Platform welcomes the publication of the Plan and its ambitious goals and looks forwards to continuing the stakeholder discussion towards its successful implementation.

Beating Cancer Together: A European Union that leads on screening

The adoption of an updated EU-wide cancer screening recommendation in December 2022 represents an important step forward in cancer prevention within the framework of Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan. The positive impact this measure can have on people and health systems requires political commitment and adequate resourcing from Member States towards its implementation, with support from the cancer community and beyond.

All.Can and the EFPIA Oncology Platform (EOP) have collaborated beginning since 2023 to promote a constructive and evidence-based dialogue on the implementation of the cancer screening recommendation in six EU countries – Belgium, Italy, Poland, Romania, Spain and Sweden – as a further step towards greater efficiency in cancer care and better health outcomes.

Through high-level roundtables and policy dialogues held in these countries, the national All.Can community, exchanging with key stakeholders and decision-makers, has been raising awareness on the value of cancer screening programmes and on concrete routes for country-level implementation. 

Urgent and sustained policy leadership and collaborative actions at all levels are crucial to strengthen cancer control and build efficiency in cancer care, aligning evidence-based policies, practices, technologies, data systems, organisational frameworks, and incentives.

The implementation of cancer screening programmes represents one of such policies that can have a meaningful impact on people’s lives and health outcomes across Europe.