Why Lung Cancer Europe Is Supporting the WECAN Open Letter on the EU Budget
Europe is in the middle of a cancer crisis. And the EU budget is about to look away.
That is not our framing. It is the opening line of an open letter published this week by WECAN (Workgroup of European Cancer Patient Advocacy Networks), co-signed by 23 organisations across Europe, including Lung Cancer Europe. We are proud to add our name. Here is why.
What the letter is about
The EU is currently negotiating its next long-term budget, the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) covering 2028 to 2034. These negotiations will determine how the EU spends nearly two trillion euros over seven years, and they will set the direction for health policy across the continent for the entire lifetime of that budget.
The European Commission’s current proposal makes a structural change that should concern everyone working in cancer. EU4Health, the dedicated EU health programme, would no longer stand alone. Instead, it would be absorbed into a new European Competitiveness Fund (ECF), pooled alongside 13 other programmes into four broad policy windows. The consequences are not technical. They are real. Health spending becomes harder to trace. The European Parliament loses its ability to scrutinise and protect health funding priorities. Long-term investment in cancer can be redirected to competing priorities at any time.
As the open letter says: health is not a sub-category of competitiveness. It is the precondition for it.
The scale of what is at stake
Every year in the EU, 2.7 million people are diagnosed with cancer and 1.3 million lose their lives. A 24% increase in cancer cases is expected by 2035. Within the lifetime of this budget alone, nearly 20 million people will face a cancer diagnosis. One in three Europeans will be directly affected.
Lung cancer sits at the centre of this crisis. It remains the leading cause of cancer death in Europe, with 470,000 new cases and 380,000 deaths every year. Progress on early detection, biomarker testing, and equitable access to treatment has been hard-won, and it depends on sustained, visible, accountable EU investment. A budget structure where health funding is invisible, unprotected, and unaccountable is not a neutral administrative arrangement. It is a decision with consequences.
Why we signed
Lung Cancer Europe’s 2026-2030 Charter sets out eleven commitments to people affected by lung cancer across Europe. Several of those commitments, including access to early detection and screening, equitable access to care regardless of geography or ability to pay, and high-quality data to improve outcomes, require exactly the kind of sustained, ring-fenced EU investment that this letter is defending.
Our key messages call for lung cancer to be treated as a top policy priority, for timely and equitable access to innovation, and for the protection of existing EU commitments under Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan. The WECAN open letter calls for the same things. That is why we signed it.
What MEPs are being asked to do
The European Parliament is now forming its position ahead of negotiations with the Council. The open letter calls on Members of the European Parliament to protect health as a standalone budget priority with a dedicated, ring-fenced EU health programme; to safeguard long-term investment in cancer and honour the commitments made under Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan; to ensure health and competitiveness are complementary rather than competing priorities; to vote with full awareness of the consequences for patients, health systems, and inequalities across Member States; and to align the MFF with Agenda 2030 and WHO standards for universal health coverage.
MEPs are not being asked to fund something new. They are being asked not to defund what Europe has already built.
Read the letter and add your voice
This is a coalition effort. Lung Cancer Europe is one voice among many, and the strength of this call depends on how many organisations stand behind it.
Lung Cancer Europe is a pan-European patient organisation dedicated to improving the lives of people affected by lung cancer. Our 2026-2030 Charter sets out eleven commitments to better diagnosis, care, information, and support across Europe.