Based on the results of the 2022 evaluation of the Cross-border Health Directive, the European Commission decided to organise a series of national workshops throughout Europe to increase visibility of the directive and the patients’ rights to cross-border care it includes. The closing conference of the EU4Health project, which started in 2023, was held in Brussels on 26 March 2026.

The project addressed the challenge posed by citizens’ limited information about their rights to cross-border care. The first workshop took place in Malta in February 2024, the last one in October 2025, in the Netherlands. Four of them, including the one held in Oradea (Romania), were organised in border regions, highlighting the importance of the Directive in terms of cross-border regional health integration. The final event in Brussels has summed up the outcomes and lessons of the series of workshops.

The participants of the event were welcomed by the Commissioner Mr Olivér Várhelyi, the representative of the Cyprus EU Presidency, Ms Anastasia Christodoulidou, and the MEP and rapporteur on the implementation of the Directive, Mr Vlad Vasile-Voiculescu.

After the presentations of Ms Catherine Donohoe (National Contact Point (NCP) of Ireland) and Mr Ewout Van Ginneken (Director of the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies), the first panel’s participants discussed the achievements and the shortcomings of the implementation of the Directive. The former presentation summarised the challenges to the wider utilisation of the patient’s rights. The second speaker has given a comprehensive overview of the evolution of European health policy. The panellists representing NCPs, patient advocacy organisations and the European Commission discussed the identified challenges in a structured format.

The second panel concentrated on cross-border regional solutions. Simona Pohlova, head of unit of the DG REGIO, presented the EU toolkit facilitating the development of cross-border health services. Gyula Ocskay (CESCI) spotlighted a few examples of different levels of cross-border health integration. The panellists coming from different countries mentioned daily practices of the topic, e.g. the shared services between the Estonian Valga and the Latvian Valka, the cross-border health care zones (ZOASTs) between France and Belgium, and the exemplary cooperation models around the Netherlands.

The last panel focused on rare diseases and the European Reference Network (ERN), facilitating cross-border care of these diseases. The two keynote speakers (Ms Donata Meroni from DG REGIO and Ms Ruth Ladenstein, Coordinator of the ERN PaedCan) emphasised that the problem should not be neglected, as nearly 40 million European citizens suffer from one or more rare diseases, whose treatments are not always available in the relevant Member State, or, in another one, more effective treatments can be requested. The Directive enables cross-border treatment in these cases.

The conference served as the closing event of the project, but, at the same time, it opened the way for future structured exchanges, which might contribute to the planned revision of the Directive.