When the health workforce breaks, the system follows
In 2022, EU countries faced an estimated shortfall of 1.2 million, which is forecast to rise to 4 million by 2030. Without urgent action, the effects will only worsen, threatening the health of patients across Europe. As a result, this workforce crisis is European doctors’ top priority.
The impact on patients is already clear. Across Europe, countries are grappling with understaffed clinics, longer waiting lists, and communities left medically underserved. In some regions, patients must travel hours to see a doctor. These gaps translate into unmet medical needs, poor patient outcomes, and stark health inequalities.
As a practicing doctor in Germany, I see firsthand how shortages strain the system. Unsafe staffing levels force early patient discharges and postponed operations. Yet these issues often go unnoticed by management, who sometimes claim we have too many doctors. There is a disconnect between the realities of frontline care and the decisions of administrators and policy-makers. Instead of addressing structural causes, quick fixes such as recruiting doctors from abroad are implemented but without sufficient integration support. At my hospital in Murnau, we treat numerous patients who are referred from other hospitals with lower levels of care. Experience shows that our international colleagues there often work hard, but language barriers persist, hindering teamwork and patient communication.
In March, I was honoured to moderate our European Parliament event on solutions to the workforce crisis, bringing together MEPs, European Commission officials, and doctors from over 30 countries. The discussion launched our ‘Doctor’s Voice’ campaign to ensure policymakers hear directly from those on the front line. I kindly thank MEP András Kulja for hosting this event in the Parliament as well as MEP Tilly Metz for co-hosting the event. While political currents are increasingly shifting from cooperation towards self sustaining isolationism, this approach is fundamentally incompatible with the challenges facing our healthcare systems. European health policy has traditionally respected national sovereignty over the organisation and financing of healthcare systems.
The reality is that training and sustaining a robust medical workforce cannot be solved in isolation. Working conditions, education and training quality, and doctors’ mobility are not separate technical challenges but interconnected issues that extend well beyond the health sector itself. They implicate education systems, labour and social policy as well the functioning of the Single Market. This is precisely why we need a comprehensive EU Health Workforce strategy, built on coordinated and multisectoral solutions that give this crisis the political priority and practical answers it urgently deserves.
The Belgian Council Presidency deserves recognition for twice putting the health workforce crisis on the European agenda: first in 2010 and again in 2024 through its Council Conclusions on the future of the European Health Union. These calls have been important signals of shared concern, but the fourteen years between them highlight the danger of leaving this issue dormant, while too many other governments bury their heads in the sand instead of delivering lasting change. Building on this work, we now call on EU institutions and national authorities to match this commitment with real political will and sustained action. A window of opportunity has opened to keep the health workforce at the top of political agendas, thanks to the Health Workforce Own-Initiative Report to be prepared in the European Parliament in the coming months. It represents an important vehicle for defining the EU’s political direction and fostering long-term commitment.
We urge EU institutions and national authorities to seize this moment to move beyond declarations and deliver the concrete, coordinated strategies and investments needed to support Europe’s healthcare professionals and ensure high-quality care for all patients. Europe’s doctors, nurses and healthcare professionals deserve more than well meaning words. Let us not look back in another decade and see another missed opportunity. This is the moment to act decisively, to prioritise recruitment and retention, and to secure the future of high quality care for every patient across Europe