European policies on climate adaptation and health

Climate and health in the key EU policy documents

Framework policies

In 2019, the European Green Deal set out the growth strategy to transform the Union into a fair and prosperous society, with a modern, resource-efficient, and competitive economy, where there are no net emissions of greenhouse gases as of 2050 and where economic growth is decoupled from resource use. The European Green Deal also aims to protect, conserve, and enhance the Union’s natural capital, and ‘to protect the health and well-being of citizens from environment-related risks and impacts’.

One of the six interlinked thematic priority objectives of 8th Environment Action Programme to 2030 (‘8th EAP’) is continuous progress in enhancing and mainstreaming adaptive capacity, including on the basis of ecosystem approaches, strengthening resilience and adaptation and reducing the vulnerability of the environment, society and all sectors of the economy to climate change, while improving prevention of, and preparedness for, weather- and climate-related disasters. The document also states that swiftly achieving climate and environmental targets while protecting the health and well-being of people from environmental risks and impacts and ensuring a just and inclusive transition should be the priority. The 8th EAP further recognizes the need for improved coordination between environmental and health policies to strengthen climate resilience, particularly in vulnerable communities.

The Competitiveness Compass of January 2025, provides the strategic framework to steer the European Commission's work until 2029. It states that the EU and Member States must improve their resilience and step up their preparedness, regularly updating climate risk assessments and improving critical infrastructure resilience. Integrating climate resilience in urban planning, deploying nature-based solutions, developing nature credits and adaptation in agriculture while preserving food security, are also among the options to protect the EU economy and society from the worst of natural calamities such as floods, droughts, wildfires and storms that compromise supply chains and production sites.

EU policies on climate adaptation

Article 5 of the European Climate Law, which entered into force in June 2021, makes adaptation to climate change a legal obligation for EU institutions and Member States, requiring them to ‘ensure continuous progress in enhancing adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience and reducing vulnerability to climate change in accordance with Article 7 of the Paris Agreement’. Also, Member States’ adaptation policies ‘shall take into account the particular vulnerability of the relevant sectors’, integrate ‘adaptation to climate change in a consistent manner in all policy areas’, and ‘focus, in particular, on the most vulnerable and impacted populations and sectors’.

The European Commission adopted in February 2021 the Communication ‘Forging a climate-resilient Europe – the new EU Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change’. It outlines a long-term vision for the EU to become a climate-resilient society, fully adapted to the unavoidable impacts of climate change by 2050, and it also states the need for a deeper understanding of the climate risks for health. A key action under this strategy is the European Climate and Health Observatory.The Observatory plays a critical role in gathering and disseminating knowledge on climate-related health impacts, facilitating policy development, and supporting adaptation planning.

The European Environment Agency published the first European Climate Risk Assessment (EUCRA) in March 2024. The EUCRA assesses major climate change related impacts and risks – including those for public health, especially from heat – in Europe, and warns that many of these risks have already reached critical levels and could become catastrophic without urgent and decisive action. In response to EUCRA, the European Commission issued the Communication 'Managing climate risks - protecting people and prosperity'. It identifies solutions that make administrative systems in the EU and its Member States better able to deal with climate risks, and specific actions for impacted clusters (including health), which the Commission will take forward. The Communication underscores the need for early warning systems, climate-informed healthcare planning, and research on climate-sensitive diseases while integrating climate and health into existing policies. It prioritizes air quality improvements, strengthened heat-health action plans, and occupational safety and health legislation. Additionally, it highlights the European Climate and Health Observatory, enhanced surveillance and response mechanisms, cross-border medical mobilization, and secure access to critical medical countermeasures to bolster resilience against climate-related health threats.

The political guidelines for the European Commission 2024-2029 outline the establishment of a European Climate Adaptation Plan (ECAP) aimed at enhancing the preparedness and planning capabilities of Member States, while ensuring regular science-based risk assessments. The ECAP will address the European Council's call for a comprehensive, all-hazards and whole-of-society approach to managing climate risks. As a key component of a broader policy agenda, alongside other flagship initiatives, the ECAP seeks to safeguard Europe's productivity, security, and prosperity, and enhance its competitiveness. The European Commission plans to adopt the ECAP policy package in the latter half of 2026. This plan will assess climate impacts and risks across sectors such as infrastructure, energy, water, food, and land in both urban and rural areas, and will explore incentives for nature-based solutions. Additionally, the Commission aims to amplify resilience financing and strategically leverage public resources to fully harness private sector investment in resilience. The ECAP will operate in conjunction with other Commission initiatives, including the Water Resilience Strategy, the Competitiveness Compass, and the EU Preparedness Union Strategy.

The EU Preparedness Union Strategy, adopted in March 2025, identifies climate risks among current threats. It highlights the need to anticipate and prevent these risks by addressing them in a comprehensive way, considering how they interact and cause ripple effects. It plans to conduct a detailed assessment of risks and threats across various sectors in the EU. The strategy aims to build resilience into EU policies, making them stronger against climate challenges to prevent future crises. Beyond referring to ECAP, it commits to closing the gap in insurance coverage. The Euroepan Commission will look into solutions, taking into account recommendations from the European Central Bank and other relevant authorities, to ensure better insurance protection against climate risks for the European population.

EU coordinating activities on health

Under Article 168 of the Treaty of the Functioning of the EU, the primary responsibility for organizing and providing health services and medical care lies with the Member States. EU health policy therefore serves to complement national policies, and to ensure health protection in all EU policies. For example, to strengthen the preparedness and the coordination of responses to health threats, the EU adopted in 2022 Regulation 2022/2371 on serious cross-border threats to health, repealing Decision 1082/2013/EU. It provides the EU with a strong and comprehensive mandate for coordination and cooperation for a more effective response to serious cross-border health threats, at both the EU and EU Member State levels. It aims to strengthen prevention, preparedness and response planning; reinforce epidemiological surveillance and monitoring; improve data reporting; and strengthen EU coordination.

The European Commission is building a strong European Health Union to further improve coordination of serious cross-border threats including those associated with environment and climatic conditions. According to the Communication: Building a European Health Union - preparedness and resilience, the European Health Union builds on the EU’s joint effort to reconcile the relationship with the natural environment by engaging in different and more sustainable patterns of economic growth. Fighting climate change and finding ways to adapt to it; preserving and restoring biodiversity; improving diets and lifestyles; reducing and removing pollution from the environment will have positive effects on citizens’ health.

The EU4Health Programme is the biggest EU health programme to date that will invest €5.3 billion into actions with an EU added value, complementing EU countries’ policies and pursuing one or several of EU4Health’s objectives. The programme aims to improve and foster health in the Union, protect people in the Union from serious cross-border threats to health, improve medicinal products, medical devices and crisis-relevant products and strengthen health systems. EU4Health intends, among others, to “contribute to tackling the negative impact of climate change and environmental degradation on human health”, by providing funding to eligible entities. The Programme’s objectives will be pursued, ensuring a high level of human health protection in all Union policies and activities in keeping with the One Health approach, where applicable.

Established in 2021, the European Health Emergency and Preparedness Response Authority (HERA) takes EU preparedness and response capacity to serious cross-border health threats to a new level and will be a key element for the establishment of a stronger European Health Union. Equipped with a budget of €6 billion for the period 2022-2027, HERA works to prevent, detect, and rapidly respond to health emergencies, including from climate change. It operates in two modes: Before a health crisis - in the “preparedness phase” - HERA will work closely with other EU and national health agencies, industry, and international partners to improve the EU's readiness for health emergencies. In case of a public health emergency at EU level, HERA switches quickly to emergency operations, taking swift decisions and activating emergency measures.

On specific health topics, the EU pharmaceutical strategy (2023) aims to revise pharmaceutical legislation to strengthen environmental risk assessment requirements and conditions of use for medicines and take stock of the results of research under the Innovative Medicines initiative.

The Commission Communication on a comprehensive approach to mental health from June 2023 refers to climate change as a contributing factor to mental health challenges. It also highlights that young people are strongly preoccupied by climate change and that many of them see their future as frightening.

European agencies and authorities in the fields of climate change and health

To strengthen Europe's defences against infectious disease, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) was established in 2005. The ECDC is in charge of scientific evidence and risk assessments on communicable diseases, including those associated with a changing climate. European countries report data from their surveillance systems to the ECDC. Under regulation 2022/2371 the list of diseases notifiable at EU level to the ECDC will be updated allowing timely detection of diseases including those associated with climate change.  ECDC developed the 'European Environment and Epidemiology' (E3) Network, which provides real-time monitoring tools of meteorological conditions to assess the risk of water-borne diseases and vector-borne diseases as well as other tools for risk assessments. In addition, ECDC and European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) jointly coordinate VectorNet, now in its third iteration (2019–2024), which is a platform which supports the collection of data on vectors and pathogens in vectors related to both animal and human health. It facilitates exchanging data on the geographical distribution of arthropod disease vectors in Europe.

The European Environment Agency co-manages with the European Commission the European Climate and Health Observatory. It provides the policy makers with robust and independent information about the environment, including the trends and projections in climate hazards and their impacts on human health.

Established in 2023, the cross-agency One Health task force is a joint initiative of five agencies of the European Union that have a technical and scientific mandate in the areas of environmental sustainability, public health and food safety: EEA, ECDC, EFSA, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA). The cross-agency One Health task force framework for action (2024-26) aims, among others, to improve the ability of the agencies to better assess the impact of climate change on the occurrence infectious diseases through joint activities and knowledge exchange.

Other EU agencies that increasingly engage in climate change and health topics include the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) and European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound).

EU policy areas with co-benefits for climate change effects on health

Many other EU policies indirectly address the health impacts associated with climate change. For instance, the EU’s air pollution reduction targets under the Zero Pollution Action Plan directly contribute to mitigating respiratory and cardiovascular diseases aggravated by climate change. Further actions to regulate industrial emissions and transport emissions will have significant health co-benefits. The Renovation Wave aims to make buildings more energy efficient, recognising that people in poorly insulated and equipped buildings are more exposed to hypothermia in winter and heat stress in summer, notably if they belong to vulnerable groups. The Nature Restoration Regulation adopted in 2024 emphasises that restoring ecosystems contributes to the Union’s climate change mitigation and adaptation objectives and specifies that Member States shall ensure that there is no net loss in the total national area of urban green space and of urban tree canopy cover in urban ecosystem areas. The One Health framework is crucial in addressing the intersection of climate change, biodiversity loss, and human health. Strengthening cross-sectoral cooperation among health, environment, and agricultural sectors is vital to mitigate emerging health threats linked to climate change.

According to the Directive on the resilience of critical entities that entered into force in January 2023, the Member States will need to identify the critical entities from the list of essential services for various sectors, including the health sector, with distribution, manufacturing, provision of healthcare, and medical services, and take measures to enhance their resilience against various threats, including risks to public health or natural disasters.

Union Civil Protection Mechanism aims to strengthen cooperation between EU countries and 10 participating states to improve prevention, preparedness and response to disasters. It applies a joint approach to pool the expertise and capacities of first responders, to avoid duplication of relief efforts and ensure that assistance meets the needs of those affected when an emergency overwhelms the response capabilities of an individual country. Specialised teams and equipment can be mobilised at short notice for deployment inside and outside Europe.

OSH Framework Directive introduces measures to encourage improvements in the safety and health of workers at work. It encourages prevention of all occupational risks that may emerge in employers' work activities from all branches of economic activity (public or private) and which can affect their workers and third parties.

The EU taxonomy on sustainable finance aims to deliver a healthier and more climate-resilient living environment by directing more private investments into environmentally sustainable activities, including to climate change adaptation.

Investment in knowledge development and implementation

Horizon Europe  is the EU’s key funding programme for research and innovation until 2027. Equipped with a budget of €95.5 billion, it tackles climate change, helps to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, and boosts the EU’s competitiveness and growth. It offers numerous funding opportunities for research and innovation on the health effects of climate change, notably under the so-called health cluster. Six ongoing European research and innovation projects focus on climate change impacts on health and collaborate within the Climate-Health Cluster to increase the societal and policy impact of EU-funded research linked to climate, health and policy.

Another important part of Horizon Europe are the so-called EU Missions - commitments to solve major societal challenges – and which include the EU Mission on climate change adaptation, including societal transformation. Equipped with a budget of €673 million, it focuses on supporting EU regions, cities and local authorities in their efforts to build resilience against the impacts of climate change. 312 regional and local authorities have signed the Mission Charter to date. The Mission on climate-neutral and smart cities aims to foster a just transition to improve people’s health and well-being, with co-benefits, such as improved air quality or healthier lifestyles, emphasizing the important nexus of climate change adaptation, mitigation and health.

The European Commission is currently developing the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda on climate and health, following up from the conference ‘Research Perspectives on the Health Impacts of Climate Change’ in February 2024. This initiative seeks to bridge the gap between research and policy implementation, ensuring that new scientific insights translate into effective public health interventions.

The information on the research projects funded by the ongoing and previous EU framework programmes is available in the Resource Catalogue of the Observatory.