The pandemic may have receded in Europe but the sense of a health care crisis lingers. Multiple meaty challenges are around: medicines shortages, workforce fatigue, strained budgets, drug affordability, supply chain issues, an ageing population — and that’s on top of looming health threats like antimicrobial resistance, rising infectious diseases and climate change. EU’s ambitious European Health Union embodies solutions to many of these issues and aims to establish a robust crisis response system for new threats on the horizon.

With the 2024 European elections looming, pivotal health files including the pharmaceutical legislation, European Health Data Space and Substances of Human Origin are racing to be wrapped up. As the curtain falls on a game-changing few years in European health policy making, it’s time for a stocktake of where we are now and how to tackle the next challenge: Europe’s health care permacrisis.

POLITICO will bring together a stellar line-up of speakers for a series of interviews and panel discussions moderated by our in-house journalists. The eighth edition of POLITICO Live’s Health Care Summit — which promises to be an intense and informative event — will be held on October 24-25 in Brussels and online. The summit comes at a critical moment for key policymakers, industry experts, medical professionals, patients’ representatives and more to shape the future of health care policy in the EU.

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