Hungary brushes off ministerial no-shows at EU Council health summit

Government health officials gathered in Budapest this morning (25 July) to discuss EU action on heart disease and implementation of new rules on sharing and access to medical data, with Hungary claiming progress despite an ongoing diplomatic chill that saw only a handful of countries send ministers to the informal summit.

Orazio Schillaci from Italy, Bulgaria’s Galya Kondeva-Mankova and Maltese lawmaker Jo Etienne Abela were the only fully fledged ministers on the attendee list. Czechia and Greece sent deputy ministers; some eight others – including Germany and neighbour Slovakia – sent delegates of state secretary or similar rank.

Hungarian health minister Péter Takács brushed off suggestions that the lack of senior government officials reflected a backlash against Hungary’s conduct in the first weeks of its six-month turn as chair of inter-governmental legislative debates, with premier Viktor Orbán having drawn fire for using the EU Council presidency as a launchpad for a self-styled ‘peace mission’ to Moscow and Beijing.

“I believe that given it is the summer season these are by no means bad numbers,” Takács told reporters after chairing a first round of talks. He stressed that informal ministerial summits were policy forums where delegates share opinions “based on facts and not ideology”. Such meetings were “an island of peace in European politics and, I hope, will remain so”, he said.

Still, the choice of delegate from some member states was difficult to interpret other than as a diplomatic rebuke: Austria sent its resident ambassador, Denmark an EU affairs specialist, Belgium an attaché from its EU representative office in Brussels, and France the deputy head of a delegation on European and international affairs.

Action on heart disease

On the substance of the talks, the Hungarian minister said there had been broad agreement among delegates on the need for concerted action on cardiovascular disease, and the importance of prevention and promoting health literacy. Ideas put forward during the discussion would be channelled into Council conclusions at a formal ministerial summit in December, he said.

“We are confident that we will jointly adopt an action plan as successful as the one on cancer that was agreed [during the presidencies of] Sweden, France and Czechia,” Takács said.

Sharing health data

Regarding implementation of the recently agreed regulation for a European Health Data Space (EHDS), the minister said Hungary was floating the idea of setting up a joint platform where data could be shared in a “structured form” for subsequent use in research and policy planning.

“I believe this could be a good pilot project where we can test in real time what the system is capable of,” he said. “Good decisions can only be based on good data – I am convinced of this.”

Organ donation plan

Discussions were due to move onto the topic of organ donation in an afternoon session, said Takács, who earlier in the week had outlined potentially controversial plans to boost availability by implementing a universal ‘opt-out’ system.

“Organ donation not only saves lives, but is also the most effective intervention in the treatment of certain chronic diseases,” Takács said.

“The success of the EU organ donation and transplantation action plan between 2009 and 2015, which saw a 21% increase in organ donation, shows that cooperation is crucial, and that a new action plan is needed,” he said.