Germany, Portugal and Slovenia have presented their joint EU presidency programme for the next 18 months, starting on 1 July 2020. The focus of the new programme will be on social recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic effects.
The first mission of the trio Presidency, which will be started by Germany, is to make sure that all EU Member States agree on the COVID-19 recovery fund for Europe. This will be a very difficult task, as the Member States will first need to agree on the amount of money allocated to those recovery funds, and then, on which of those are going to be given freely and which as loans.
The EFN would like to remind the three-country participating in the trio Presidency that as important as the economic recovery, it is to prepare our healthcare system for future healthcare emergencies and/or COVID-19 waves. All EU stakeholders involved, both at the EU and Member States levels should read and learn from the EFN’s report on Lessons Learned from Ebola and COVID-19. This report contains valuable lessons on how the EU should prepare for future health emergencies and/or pandemics. “We are not prepared unless we are all prepared” is the underlining motto of the report and its conclusions.
The EFN Office will closely monitor the development of the new EU Presidency to make sure that nurses’ voices are heard and taken into account in new policies that affect Europe’s healthcare systems. It is key that nurses are included in the drafting of those policies in a co-design process, as they will be the end-users of those. Nurses have been one of the most important actors during the COVID-19 pandemic, at the frontline of healthcare.