A proposed Council Recommendation would set EU-wide standards for cardiovascular health checks targeting a 25 percent cut in premature deaths by 2035, but fewer than half of Member States currently run any screening programme at all
Cardiovascular disease kills 1.7 million people in the European Union every year, costing the bloc’s economies more than EUR 282 billion annually. And yet, fewer than half of EU Member States currently run a structured cardiovascular screening programme. The European Commission’s DG SANTE is now consulting the public and stakeholders on a proposed Council Recommendation that would change that, setting out common standards for health checks designed to identify at-risk individuals before a heart attack or stroke occurs.
The proposal sits at the centre of the Commission’s Safe Hearts Plan, the 2025 communication that set a flagship goal of cutting premature cardiovascular mortality across the EU by 25 percent by 2035. The core argument is that over 75 percent of cardiovascular deaths trace back to modifiable risk factors such as high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, diabetes and obesity. Between 20 and 40 percent of all heart attacks occur in people with no prior diagnosis. Catching those people earlier, through standardised risk assessment tools and targeted screening campaigns, should translate directly into fewer deaths and lower healthcare costs over time. The numbers also reveal an equity problem: 34 percent of EU adults aged 25 to 64 reported not having their blood pressure measured in the past year, a share that rises with socioeconomic disadvantage and differs significantly between regions.
The planned recommendation would encourage Member States to develop national screening programmes focused on measuring blood pressure, blood glucose and cholesterol across defined age groups. It would introduce both systematic screening for populations identified statistically as at risk and opportunistic screening during routine consultations with a doctor. Artificial intelligence and digital health tools, linked to the emerging European Health Data Space, would support early identification of at-risk individuals by processing medical records for risk indicators including family history, obesity and menopause status. The initiative addresses a known inequity directly, as women face significantly higher rates of cardiovascular misdiagnosis, and socioeconomically disadvantaged groups carry worse outcomes across the board. The Commission signals it wants the recommendation to account specifically for their needs.
Because a Council Recommendation is non-binding, Member States retain full discretion on how to implement it within their national health systems. The Commission ruled out a formal impact assessment on those grounds. Implementation costs would include staff training, laboratory capacity, or developing the neccesary IT infrastructure, but the initiative projects those costs will be offset over time by savings in acute care and productivity gains from a healthier working population. A monitoring framework under the Safe Hearts Plan will track progress, and the initiative is explicitly designed to complement a second forthcoming recommendation on personalised treatment and monitoring of cardiovascular disease.
The consultation opened on 16 April 2026, with a Q3 2026 target for finalisation. For readers who want to influence the recommendation before it reaches the Council, DG SANTE is currently accepting contributions from healthcare professionals, patient organisations, civil society groups, research institutions and the general public. The initiative sits under Article 168 TFEU, which gives the EU competence to support and coordinate Member State public health action but not to legislate directly in its place. This is a design choice that ensures flexibility, but one that critics of EU health policy coordination will likely scrutinise.
