On the first of January 2021, Portugal took over the EU Council Presidency from Germany. All EU Presidencies are of utmost importance for the EFN, as all policy developments happening at the EU level may touch upon the nursing profession.
The new EU Presidency has five overarching priorities:
- Resilient Europe: promoting Europe’s recovery, cohesion and values in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Green Europe: promoting the EU as a leader in climate action.
- Digital Europe: accelerating digital transformation in the service of citizens and enterprises.
- Social Europe: promoting and strengthen the European social model.
- Global Europe: promoting Europe’s openness to the world.
All five priorities are important for the EFN, and hence they will be closely monitored. However, “digital Europe” and “social Europe” are the two likely to affect the nursing profession the most.
On the digitalisation of Europe, the EFN is actively providing nursing end-user input in two EU projects that are developing and testing interoperable pan-European systems for Electronic Health Records. These are InteropEHRate and Smart4Health. This engagement will continue during 2021, with hopefully some other new opportunities to influence the ongoing European digitalisation of healthcare.
On social Europe, the Portuguese Presidency will “promote increased cooperation between the Member States in the field of Health, supporting the measures needed to increase the response capability of health services to threats to public health”. The EFN will be working on this topic to make sure that the outcomes of these discussions and strengthened cooperation strengthens the nursing profession and the frontline nurses.
The EFN wishes its EU Alliances, EFN Members and all frontline nurses a very happy and healthy 2021.