Support for healthy longevity in the EU
How are citizens participating in the Conference of Europe?
The EU has launched a Conference on the Future of Europe, providing a demographic advisory platform, where citizens can express their opinions and vote on the future of the EU. The Longevity Initiative believes medical services that will enable healthy longevity should be available in the EU in the future. The group encourages everyone to vote on the platform and to express the public desire for the advancement in science, medicine, and healthcare systems to enable healthy longevity sooner.
At the end of 2019, the European Commission and the European Parliament announced the Conference on the future of Europe.
This expression of democracy is very relevant to encourage the European institutions listen to citizens and civil society. The goal of the conference is to look at the medium to long term future of the EU and see what reforms should be made to its policies and institutions. The conference will last for two years and end after spring in 2022.
The EU has created a webpage where citizens can post their proposals for the direction of EU policy and can vote on other proposals. The institutions are explicit that they will listen to what Europeans have to say. In their words:
“The European Parliament, the Council and the European Commission have committed to listen to Europeans and to follow up, within their sphere of competences, on the recommendations made. “
“This platform is the hub of the Conference on the Future of Europe. This is your opportunity to speak up, to say what kind of Europe you want to live in, to help shape our future.”
There are ten topics where submitting proposals and voting take place, namely, climate change and the environment, health, a stronger economy, social justice and jobs, EU in the world, values and rights, rule of law, security, digital transformation, European democracy, migration, education, culture, youth and sport and other ideas.
All around Europe the activists have now gathered to influence politics to push the agenda of healthy longevity. They have a vision to develop medical science and technology for effective action against the biological aging process. This means that such a medicine could prevent a whole range of diseases presented with old age – form Alzheimer’s and heart diseases to cancers and sarcopenia. Prominent scientists believe that we know enough about the aging process to foresee the therapies that would enable being 90 years old and still having great health and energy.
The activists from the Longevity initiative wish for this medical progress happens as soon as possible, to save lives, increase the healthy years and to provide other benefits to society. The reader should imagine that, instead of taking care of their older parents, their parents could, despite of old age, still have so much vitality to look after the grand or grand grandchildren, volunteer in local humanitarian organisations or even work if they prefer to. But to achieve these huge benefits, actions should be taken now.
For medical science and companies that are developing medicines based on clinical studies, institutional support is urgently needed. That is why Attila Csordas, as a representative of European activists, who wrote a proposal to the Conference on the Future of Europe would like to ‘propose effective legal, budgetary, regulatory, and institutional commitments to enable science intensive healthy longevity research and technologies, large scale aging focused geroprotective clinical trials and equitable access to these technologies to increase healthy life expectancy in the European Union.
- legal commitment: acknowledge the malleability of biological aging & the translational geroscience paradigm as the ultimate enabler of age-neutral human health in the EU’s legislative DNA. This specific EU legislation then can be used to justify the other 3 derivative commitments throughout.
- budgetary commitment: A sizeable proportion of the EU R&D budget dedicated specifically for developing science intensive healthy longevity technologies.
- regulatory commitment: Green light for Europe-wide aging focused geroprotective clinical trials by specific, enabling EMA regulation.
- institutional commitment: setting up a coordinated European Institute for Healthy Longevity research in EU member states, backed by the previous 3 commitments.
Voters need to register at: https://futureu.europa.eu/
Click ‘Endorse.’ on The Longevity Initiative proposals or others and have your say!
With your help, we and our loved ones will be less threatened from the maladies of old age and will be able to fully enjoy the later and wiser years of our lives.
Author: Martin Lipovšek, written on 30.6.2021 in Ljubljana