The European Commission’s Directorate General for Health Policy (DG SANTÉ), in cooperation with the Romanian and Hungarian National Contact Points, organised a workshop to promote Directive 2011/24/EU in Oradea, on 5 February 2025. The workshop, the last in a series of ten events, was also attended by the Secretary General of CESCI.

In 2011, the European Union adopted a Directive that allows and regulates the cross-border provision of healthcare services. One of the findings of the third report on the application of the Directive published in 2022 was that one of the reasons for the low number of cross-border cases is that EU citizens were not aware of the Directive and the possibilities it offered. To compensate for this shortcoming, the European Commission organised a series of workshops, the ninth of which was held in Oradea. The workshop was jointly organised by the Romanian and Hungarian national contact points for EU patients’ rights (in Hungary this task is carried out by the Integrated Legal Protection Service).

The conference included three thematic panels and was welcomed online by the Romanian Minister of Health Alexandru Rafila, the Hungarian State Secretary for Health Péter Takács, Sandra Gallina, the Director General for Health and Food Safety of DG SANTÉ and in person by Larina Mezinu-Bălan, Vice President of the Romanian National Health Insurance Fund. The first panel focused on patient rights in cross-border patient care. A general overview of the topic was given online by Natalia Zampieri, who works for the Cross-border Health Directive Unit of DG SANTÉ. In her presentation, she pointed out that healthcare was a national competence, but Article 168 of the Lisbon Treaty encourages cross-border cooperation between Member States on this issue.

Andreea Gărăianu and Krisztina Novák, heads of the two national contact points, spoke about the application of the Directive in Romania and Hungary. The Hungarian example is particularly instructive, as the Integrated Legal Protection Service also deals with children’s rights and the rights of the elderly, in addition to patients’ rights, and can therefore carry out its informative activities in an integrated way, which the director said is something they are consciously striving to do. In the round table discussion following the presentations, she mentioned several examples (e.g. informative events in elderly homes, playful awareness-raising among children, training courses for doctors on cross-border patients’ rights, etc.). During the round table, moderated in part by Giulio Gallo, Policy Officer of DG SANTÉ Eamon Coyne and Lulian Raţiu also discussed the technical background and usage of the MyHealth@EU application.

The second panel discussed cross-border healthcare cooperation. Anna Monika Modzelewska from DG REGIO presented the Interreg programme, which can provide financial support for this type of projects. She also mentioned the Bridge4EU instrument as one of the achievements of the Hungarian EU Presidency, which systematically removes legal barriers of patient care. Dorel Săndesc, Director of the Pius Brinzeu County Emergency Clinic in Timişoara and Viktória Sümegi, Head of the University of Szeged’s sub-institution in Szentes, presented specific Hungarian-Romanian projects, followed by a presentation by Gyula Ocskay, Secretary General of CESCI, who highlighted some examples of cross-border integrated health services in Central Europe as good practices to follow.

The last panel was dedicated to rare diseases, during which Romanian and Hungarian representatives of the European Reference Network for Rare Diseases (ERN) and of NGOs representing such patients exchanged their experiences.

The lessons learned were summarised by Giulio Gallo, Valeria Herdea, President of the Romanian National Health Insurance Fund and Krisztina Novák, Director of the Integrated Legal Protection Service.

The event provided an excellent opportunity to exchange information and it enhanced cooperation between the Hungarian and Romanian health institutions.