The European Parliament’s health rapporteur has publicly questioned whether the purpose of the EU’s proposed European Competitiveness Fund (ECF) is to serve health policy or industrial strategy. His remarks expose deeper uncertainty about the fund’s core purpose.
During an expert hearing in the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE), Radan Kanev (EPP/BLG), rapporteur for the draft opinion of the Committee on Public Health (SANT) on the proposal establishing the ECF, described his mandate as a difficult task. “The link between competitiveness and health policy is at best abstract,” Mr Kanev told the committee and the present experts.
“It is rather unclear whether in the health, biotech and agriculture window we are pursuing health policies or industrial policies,” the rapporteur added. This remains an open question. “It could be both and it’s not clear in the text of the Commission.”
An industrial reading of health
Turning directly to the experts in the room, Mr Kanev asked: “What is your read? What is your take on this specific window of the competitiveness fund?” The exchange revealed a structural ambiguity in the design of the ECF — one that extends beyond health.
Responding to MEP Kanev’s request, Fredrik Erixon, Founding Director of the European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE), framed the issue primarily as a life sciences competitiveness challenge. Europe, he argued, has lost ground in pharmaceuticals and biotech innovation despite having pioneered much of modern chemistry and life sciences.
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The Swedish economist cited “Eroom’s law”, the observation that the cost of developing a new drug roughly doubles every five years. He described declining R&D productivity as a structural constraint.
In his view, improving framework conditions for biotech innovation and restoring Europe’s global competitiveness in life sciences should be central objectives of the fund. The emphasis was industrial: innovation economics and productivity, rather than public health systems or preparedness.
What is competitiveness?
The uncertainty does not stop at health. ITRE rapporteur Christian Ehler (EPP/DEU) questioned the conceptual foundation of the entire instrument. “Interestingly, the European Commission does not define what is competitiveness in a competitiveness fund,” he observed.
Mr Ehler asked whether the ECF is to function as: “a competitiveness fund, a resilience fund or a sovereignty instrument.” Lawmakers are still debating whether the fund’s core objective is industrial growth, strategic autonomy, crisis resilience, or a hybrid of all three. The identity of the instrument itself remains unsettled. That conceptual ambiguity, experts warned, risks translating into structural weakness.
Mr Erixon returned with a broader critique of the proposal’s architecture. “I think the proposal we have right now is setting us up for failure. Because there’s just too many objectives,” he said. “There are too many policy objectives, too many outcome objectives. There are too many sectoral, sub-sectors, technologies that are being identified.”
Horses, camels, and ring-fencing
ECIPE’s founding director then ventured into metaphor territory: “There is this old expression, which is that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. And this is where we are going here. We’re going to get a lot of camels when we’re trying to make horses.” The concern was institutional: layering multiple objectives without clear prioritisation risks diluting strategic focus.
While ITRE exposed conceptual uncertainty, the real political battleground lies in the SANT Committee. The issue at hand—whether health will retain its own protected budget line—has loomed since the Commission proposed integrating EU4Health into the broader Competitiveness Fund.
I think the proposal we have right now is setting us up for failure. Because there’s just too many objectives. — Fredrik Erixon, European Centre for International Political Economy
SANT members reiterated concerns that folding EU4Health into a larger “health, biotech and agriculture” window risks diluting health policy priorities. As negotiations on the 2026 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) approach, securing a protected health allocation has become a key strategic objective for the committee.
The €35bn benchmark
The debate in SANT also turned to numbers. MEP Kristian Vigenin (S&D/BLG) compared current spending with future projections. He noted that EU-level health investment reached around €70bn under the current framework when including the Recovery and Resilience Facility.
Looking ahead, he warned: “Under the current financial period, EU level health investment reached around €70 billion when including the recovery and resilience facility. And in the next MFF, €35 billion must be considered the absolute minimum.
Anything less the Bulgarina members said, would mean “lowering level of our ambition at a time when risks are increasing”. The figure is not a formal committee position. But it establishes a political benchmark, shifting the debate from definition to quantification.
The Commission: Nothing disappears
The Commission has sought to reassure lawmakers. Dirk Van den Steen, speaking on behalf of the European Commission, stressed that while the architecture of the MFF may change, the substance of EU health action would remain intact. “The Commission’s proposal for the new MFF demonstrates that investing in population health and strong health systems is the foundation for social resilience, economic growth and competitiveness,” he told SANT members. He emphasised that the proposed ECF, together with Horizon Europe and the Union Civil Protection Mechanism, would continue to cover EU4Health priorities.
“The ECF will support actions to improve public health, strengthen health systems and enhance population health outcomes in the EU,” Mr Van den Steen said. “Those, in turn, will improve productivity and competitiveness in our economy.” He further underlined that the fund would support medical innovation and strategic autonomy in medicines, medical devices and medical countermeasures, linking it to the Critical Medicines Act, the Biotech Act and the Medical Countermeasures Strategy.
The link between competitiveness and health policy is at best abstract. — MEP Radan Kanev (EPP/BLG)
Central to the Commission’s defence is flexibility. “Flexibility is a key design feature of the next MFF,” Mr Van den Steen said. He noted that the ECF foresees “indicative envelopes at the level of the policy windows”. With the aim to ensure both predictability and room for adjustment.
Flexibility, and its limits
That flexibility argument was also scrutinised in ITRE. Johannes Jarlebring, Senior Researcher in Political Science at SIEPS, acknowledged the need to respond to unexpected challenges and evolving priorities. “But one question is how much flexibility is really needed,” he said. “And another question is how much flexibility can the Commission really handle.”
He warned of “A considerable risk that too much flexibility will generate an ongoing haggling on priorities and investments that can result from vague and non-transparent political compromises.” As Parliament prepares its negotiating position on the European Competitiveness Fund, two issues now dominate the debate. What the instrument is fundamentally designed to achieve. And whether health will be guaranteed a protected share of its resources.
For public health policy, both questions now sit at the centre of the budget negotiations, where Parliament, the Commission and ultimately the Council will have to determine whether health remains a distinct European priority or becomes part of a broader competitiveness logic.
