Last Friday, 16^th of June, the Official Spanish Chamber of Commerce in Belgium and Luxembourg held, in the framework of its initiative “In the run-up to the Spanish Presidency”, a breakfast-debate with Enrique Terol García, Counsellor for Health at the Permanent Representation of Spain to the EU. The presentation focused on the priorities of the Spanish Presidency in the health field.

The event began with a brief speech by the President of the Chamber, Pablo López Álvarez, who highlighted the speaker’s career, and César Rubio, Associate Director of Corporate Affairs at Grifols, the company sponsoring the event.

Terol then set out the priorities that REPER has proposed in health matters for the six months of the Spanish Presidency. The main objectives of management, as the speaker indicated, are to strengthen the European Health Union, to improve the protection of vulnerable people in the EU and to promote prevention and response initiatives in the face of possible health alerts.

As Terol explained, the Presidency’s health priorities are divided into three main blocks. The first is the promotion of prevention and healthy lifestyles, with issues such as childhood obesity and healthy cities on the table. The second is to strengthen the capacities of European health systems and the third aims to develop new European health strategies.

The presentation was followed by a Q&A session in which attendees raised questions on topics such as rare diseases, new regulations on vaccination and the supply chain of medicines in the EU.