Commission supports Austria, Belgium and Slovenia unlock smart investment for health reforms: a 2-year success story

Enabling smart investment and unlocking the investment potential of the EU’s various financial instruments is crucial to helping Member States’ future-proof their health systems. This was the key finding presented today at an end of project conference in Vienna, Austria attended by European Commission and national officials to mark the end of a two-year EU funded project on enabling more and better investment in health.

Healthcare systems across the EU are struggling to meet the pressing challenges of a rapidly aging population, with many more people living with chronic diseases, and a shortage of workers in the health and social care sectors. The right investments in keeping people healthier longer, digitalisation and new health technologies can help health systems meet those challenges. But public sector budgets are under pressure in all Member States, and national health systems face competition from other sectors when they approach their Ministries of Finance to secure funding.

With funding from the Technical Support Instrument (TSI), the Commission worked with health authorities from Austria, Belgium and Slovenia, on two project workstreams. The first focused on building the capacity of their Ministries of Health to make the case for more and better public investment in health. Experts from the European Observatory for Health Systems and Policies and Expertise France as well as SEO Amsterdam Economics supported the Member States to develop and use tools for conducting Health Impact Assessments, cost / benefit analyses and other relevant approaches to make an evidence-based case for investment in health reforms.

The second workstream under the TSI project was to pilot and test the concept of an EU Health Resources Hub that would help the three Member States develop health reform projects, and identify suitable EU instruments to support and implement them. Though many EU funds can be used to invest in the health sector, there is untapped potential in the area of supporting health sector reform. A team of experts, provided by Expertise France, supported Austria, Belgium and Slovenia in better utilizing these funding opportunities and turn their priorities for health reform into operational initiatives eligible for EU funding.

The three beneficiary Member States concluded that the TSI project was particularly useful in helping them conceive and operationalise impactful health reform initiatives tailored to their needs. The end of project conference in Vienna  discussed proposals developed by Austria, Belgium and Slovenia on how an EU Health Resources Hub could be designed and created based on the experiences and lessons learnt from this TSI project.

The Commission’s Directorate-General for Structural Reform Support is following up on this work via a Flagship technical support “EU Health Hub” project as part of its regular 2025 cycle of applications under the Technical Support instrument. This responds to the request made to establish an EU Health Hub in the Council Conclusions on the future of the European Health Union, adopted in June 2024.

Further information

Resources Hub for sustainable investing in health 

2025 Flagship Technical Support Projects – EU Health Hub: investing in resilient health systems