“Once a crisis strikes, it is too late to start preparing”: Commissioner Lahbib’s message to the intensive care community 

Hadja Lahbib, European Commissioner for Preparedness and Crisis Management, recorded a video message to intensivists: “You make Europe safer and better prepared” 

The Commissioner opened with a scene from Beirut. Earlier this year, she visited an intensive care unit there and met the teams treating children injured by the war. “I was impressed by their courage, their empathy and professionalism,” she said. “It was a powerful reminder of what your work means, what you do every day all across Europe. When lives are on the line, you are there.” 

First to feel the pressure, first to sound the alarm 

For Commissioner Lahbib, intensive care stands at the front line of every crisis. “When a crisis strikes, intensive care teams are among the first to feel the pressure and among the first to sound the alarm.” 

She recalled March 2020, when intensive care doctors warned Europe of the coming COVID-19 wave. That month, ESICM leaders working in Lombardy wrote to colleagues worldwide with a simple message: get ready. 

The emergencies have kept coming since: a global pandemic, war on Europe’s borders, disease outbreaks, wildfires and floods. “Each time, you care for the most critically ill patients and make life or death decisions,” she said. Intensivists therefore understand better than anyone why preparation matters. “Once a crisis strikes, it is too late to start preparing.” 

Investing before the next crisis, “above all, in people” 

Preparedness is one of the Commissioner’s top priorities, and “a responsibility we all share”: governments, hospitals, businesses and citizens. Europe needs to invest before the next crisis hits, she said, “in medical equipment, medicines and vaccines. And above all, in people.” 

She listed what the EU has already put in place: 

• the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA); 

• a strategy to secure the medicines and medical tools Europe needs; 

• support to help scientists develop and adapt vaccines faster; 

• a European Diagnostics Hub to detect new outbreaks more quickly; 

• the MediFence initiative, preparing for armed conflicts and chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats with EU countries and NATO. 

C19_SPACE: “what preparedness looks like in practice” 

“Even the best equipment will not work without skilled people to operate it,” the Commissioner said. “That’s why training is so important. And you have already shown us what is possible.” 

She pointed to C19_SPACE, the EU-funded training programme led by ESICM during the pandemic. In 2020 and 2021, it trained 17,494 doctors and nurses from outside intensive care across 24 countries. Hospitals could then staff more than 2,500 additional ICU beds when they were most needed. 

A study published in Intensive Care Medicine in 2025 puts the return on investment at 478%, recovered in about five days (Ebm et al., 2025). “That is what preparedness looks like in practice,” Commissioner Lahbib said. “More trained professionals and more lives being saved.” 

Listening to the people inside health systems 

The Commissioner closed with a call to keep the dialogue going. Europe cannot prepare its health systems for the next crisis without the people working inside them, she said. “You tell us what works and what doesn’t. That is how we do better. […] You make Europe safer and better prepared.” 

Preparedness is built between crises 

The Commissioner’s words ring true at every bedside: investing “above all, in people” cannot wait for the next emergency. For ESICM, preparedness is not something Europe can switch on when a crisis begins. It is built in the years between crises, through the everyday strength of intensive care services. 

When the next wave of patients comes through the doors, there will be no time to recruit or to train. Europe will rely on the nurses and doctors who are already there that night, at the bedside, and who know what to do. That is why we often say that a bed without staff is not an ICU bed. 

Training additional professionals, as C19_SPACE did, is therefore only part of the answer. Europe must also retain its experienced intensive care teams, support their well-being so that they stay, and maintain the infrastructure needed to expand capacity safely. Investing in intensive care every day is the surest way to be ready when the next emergency strikes. 

Bringing the voice of the bedside to Brussels 

Since the pandemic, ESICM has brought frontline evidence and hands-on experience from intensive care units to EU policymakers. For several years, the Society has actively contributed to shaping Europe’s health preparedness and resilience policies. Through this sustained engagement, ESICM has built dedicated channels of dialogue with the EU institutions, as a member of HERA’s Civil Society Forum and, more recently, by co-founding the European Parliament’s Health Security Interest Group, for which it serves as scientific lead. This work is delivering concrete progress, both towards stronger EU crisis preparedness and towards greater recognition of the needs and expertise of the intensive care community in EU policymaking. 

None of this can be achieved alone. Preparedness is a shared effort: intensive care teams across Europe grow stronger when they act together, share their experience and learn from each other. The Health Security Interest Group was built in the same spirit, to bring that collective expertise from the bedside to Europe’s decision-makers.