Shortage of health and social care workers in Europe: need to bolster national health services and staff training

Subject: Shortage of health and social care workers in Europe: need to bolster national health services and staff training

According to the WHO, Europe has an estimated shortfall of around 1.6 million health and social care workers in 2024 and will be 4 million short by 2030, at which point Europe will be short of 600 000 doctors, 2.3 million nurses and 1.1 million social care staff and assistants. The pandemic, mismatches between supply and demand for staff and the migration of workers to more economically attractive countries outside the EU are jeopardising the smooth running of the European healthcare sector. It would appear that the EU can delay taking action no longer.

The Commission’s current programmes and resources in support of nurses and social care workers seem quite limited given the scale of the EU’s health budget and to date have not made any significant progress in remedying the skills shortages in these professions.

In view of the above:

1. Does the Commission not see a need to step up the programmes and resources dedicated to this area?

2. Does it not consider it essential to promote and finance projects to train social care workers and nurses in non-EU countries with a vocation in this field (Albania, Ukraine, North Africa), and hence to produce professionals who are qualified, including linguistically, to start work immediately, in order to tackle the dysfunction in this sector and open up the possibilty of support for Europeans working in this sector?

Submitted: 29.8.2024

Answer given by Ms Kyriakides on behalf of the European Commission (18 October 2024)

Health and social care workforce shortages are an important challenge. According to Article 168(7) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (1), Member States are responsible for the management of health services, which includes ensuring sufficient availability of health workforce.

As per Article 153 (4), the design and management of social protection systems, including long-term care (LTC), remain fundamentally a responsibility of Member States.

The action plan to tackle labour and skills shortages (2) calls for actions at all levels. The Commission supports Member States through a Joint Action on health workforce planning (3), actions on skills development: BeWell (4) and training projects (5); and an action addressing shortages of nurses (6).

The Cohesion Policy Funds and the Recovery and Resilience Facility can support complementary, country-specific actions. The Commission’s Healthcare Systems Performance Assessment Expert Group will work with Member States on staffing level solutions in healthcare (7).

To help Member States address labour shortages in LTC (8), the Commission, under the European Care Strategy, proposed a Council Recommendation on access to affordable high-quality LTC, set up a European social dialogue committee for social services, and supported a skills partnership in LTC.

The Commission supports Member States in attracting talent from outside the EU (9). Talent Partnerships with five countries provide mutually beneficial frameworks to facilitate labour mobility, combined with investment in the educational and training systems to transform the risk of brain drain into brain gain.

1 ∙ ⸱ http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:12012E/TXT&from=en

2 ∙ ⸱ Commission sets out actions to tackle labour and skills shortages https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?

langId=en&catId=89&furtherNews=yes&newsId=10790 3 ∙ ⸱

EU4Health Programme: https://www.agenas.gov.it/ricerca-e-sviluppo/ricerca-internazionale/personale-sanitario-ri/heroes-health-workforce-to-meet-health- challenges 4 ∙ ⸱

Erasmus+ programme: https://bewell-project.eu/ 5 ∙ ⸱

EU4Health programme: https://health.ec.europa.eu/publications/2022-eu4health-work-programme_en; AMR EDUCare https://www.amreducare.eu/; e- Hospital4Future https://eh4future.eu/; GESEA Educational Programme https://gesea.eu/; DigiCanTrain https://digicantrain.turkuamk.fi/contact-us/; DDS-MAP https://ddsmap.easpd.eu/; TRANSiTION https://ehma.org/projects/transition/; EHMA https://hpass.healthworkforce.eu/ 6 ∙ ⸱ EU4Health programme: https://health.ec.europa.eu/publications/2024-eu4health-work-programme_en 7 ∙ ⸱ https://health.ec.europa.eu/health-systems-performance-assessment_en#:~:text=The%20Expert%20Group%20supports%20tailored%20activities%20in %20countries 8 ∙ ⸱

COM(2022)441 final. 9 ∙ ⸱

European Commission adopts Skills and Talent Mobility Package: https://migrant-integration.ec.europa.eu/news/european-commission-adopts-skills-and- talent-mobility-package_en


















| | )Sectors are selected jointly by participating Member States and non-EU countries and can include health and LTC.