The Health Security Interest Group is a cross-party platform at the European Parliament dedicated to strengthening Europe’s capacity to anticipate, absorb and recover from major health threats.
Co-chaired by Members of the European Parliament from across the political spectrum, the Group brings legislators together with leading scientific and clinical experts, the professionals who know what works, and what breaks, when health systems are pushed past their limits.
Its ambition: an EU that prepares before crises occur, able to detect health threats earlier, coordinate faster across borders, and respond more effectively when national health systems are overwhelmed.
Inaugural Meeting of the Health Security Interest Group
7 July 2026 — Strasbourg
On 7 July 2026, the Health Security Interest Group held its inaugural meeting at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, bringing together Members of the European Parliament from several political groups and leading scientific experts, with ESICM as a founding member. Members approved and signed the Group’s Manifesto and Policy Orientations 2026-2029, built around the idea of a coherent European Health Security Pillar with intensive care at its core. ESICM presented two flagship projects, the ICU Live Map and the recognition of crisis-relevant medical specialties, and MEPs Sirpa Pietikäinen, Leire Pajín, Grégory Allione and Stine Bosse each set out priorities for the 2026-2029 mandate, from European coordination to sustainable funding for preparedness.
EPIC-IG, 2022-2025: building the ground for a European Health Security Pillar
Founded on 25 January 2022, the European Parliament Interest Group on Intensive Care Medicine (EPIC-IG) brought MEPs and ESICM together to place intensive care on the EU health agenda, starting with qualifications recognition, workforce training and the European Health Data Space. A second meeting in October 2022 turned to ICU capacity, hospital management and sepsis, calling for a better-trained, better-supported workforce.
In July 2023, the Group secured a Joint Declaration with MEPs on the mental health of intensive care workers, followed in November 2023 by a session on pandemic preparedness and antimicrobial resistance that seeded the idea of an EPIC-IG manifesto. That manifesto was signed in April 2024, marking an unprecedented commitment between intensivists and policymakers to keep intensive care central to the European Health Union.
By November 2025, the Group’s scope had broadened accordingly: a session on Health Security and Global Health Resilience, co-chaired with MEP Sirpa Pietikäinen, addressed preparedness for all health emergencies, cross-border workforce mobility and civil-military cooperation. This trajectory, from intensive care advocacy to a wider health-security agenda, laid the direct groundwork for the launch of the Health Security Interest Group in July 2026.
Manifesto: a European Health Security Pillar (2026-2029)
Adopted 7 July 2026
Facing an era of accelerating and unpredictable health threats, from pandemics to antimicrobial resistance, climate-driven shocks and mass-casualty events, the Manifesto sets out the Group’s founding conviction: Europe needs a coherent health security architecture built on resilient, crisis-ready health systems with intensive care at their core. It calls on EU institutions and Member States to anticipate and prepare better, respond faster, protect the healthcare workforce, monitor crisis-response capacity in real time, secure critical medicines, tackle infections and antimicrobial resistance, counter disinformation, harness new technologies, bridge civil-military cooperation and prepare for climate-driven health shocks, matched by dedicated funding in the next EU budget.
Policy Orientations 2026-2029
2026 – 2029 mandate
The Policy Orientations translate the Manifesto into ten concrete priorities for the parliamentary mandate: preparedness, early warning and research; crisis response and cross-border coordination; workforce readiness, mobility and retention; real-time monitoring of crisis-response capacity; critical medicines and supply chains; antimicrobial resistance and severe infections; crisis communication; new technologies and data; civil-military cooperation, including CBRN; and climate change and planetary health. For each priority, the document sets a mandate objective and identifies the EU legislative and budgetary vehicles, such as the UCPM, HERA, EU4Health, Horizon Europe and the next Multiannual Financial Framework, through which it can be delivered.
Gallery
Members of the European Parliament are welcome to become participants of the HSIG and are invited to attend meetings and contribute constructively to discussions. Participants are asked to participate in discussions in a friendly manner and within the scope defined in this charter. A personal commitment and interest in the subject of European critical care, the interests of healthcare workers and patients is essential.
