EUobserver takes a deep dive into the workings and new chairs of every single European Parliament committee for the new 2024-2029 session, in a series of articles first published in our print magazine of October 2024
The subcommittee on public health (SANT) will seek to enshrine EU "pharmaceutical sovereignty" in law, while helping Europeans tackle heart disease and mental health in a digital era.
The Covid pandemic and fraying Western relations with China and Russia had shown the EU needed to produce more of its own vital medicines and ingredients.
And SANT’s first job will be to push through legislation establishing a Critical Medicines List and to start work on a Critical Medicine Act, in what subcommittee chair Adam Jaruba called “the largest reform of the EU medicines market in over 20 years”.
“International challenges along with our excessive exposure and dependencies of supply chains, force us to take urgent action to de-risk and increase our pharmaceutical sovereignty,” he said in a speech.
But geopolitics aside, Sant aims to help roll out new EU plans to combat cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and neurodegenerative disease, on the model of a recent 'Beat Cancer Plan'.
Jaruba, a 49-year-old Polish conservative MEP from Busko-Zdró, a small spa town in southern Poland, also called for a Mental Health Action Plan, saying this should "focus on the situation of young people in the digital era, the impact of content and the disruption of neurotransmitters by addictive algorithms that monetise attention".
But he also hoped SANT would help to better regulate the use of AI in medicine, improve health workers' rights, and access to medical care for rural regions.
"The use of AI algorithms in the health sector may require separate sectoral regulation, a ‘lex specialis’ [overriding special law] to the framework Artificial Intelligence Act," he said.
The 30-strong subcommittee has traditionally seen differences in approach between leftwing and rightwing MEPs.
The left side has placed more emphasis on preventive medicine, including proactive action on the environment, while the right focused on promoting scientific research and investment in remedial medicine.
Opinion was also split among those who wanted to upgrade SANT to a fully-fledged committee, which would do more legislative work, and those who wanted it to remain a more research-focused part of the European Parliament's committee on the environment, public health and food safety (ENVI).
But either way, Jaruba said the Covid pandemic had boosted public support for greater EU involvement in health affairs.
He also said health issues tended to be less politically divisive than other dossiers.
"We will do everything to sustain and strengthen this impulse [public support for EU action], and to build on it," Jaruba said.
The SANT coordinators are: Tomislav Sokol (EPP, Croatia), Vytenis Andriukaitis (S&D, Lithuania), Silvia Sardone (PfE, Italy), Ruggero Razza (ECR, Italy), Vlad Voiculescu (Renew, Romania), Ignazio Marino (Greens, Italy), Jonas Sjöstedt (Left, Sweden), and Anja Arndt (ESN, Germany).
*The subcommittee on Public Health has been transformed into a fully-fledged committee, comprising 43 members
Andrew Rettman is EUobserver's foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.
Andrew Rettman is EUobserver's foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.