New treatments that can change the course of serious diseases are reaching the market, but patient access to them is neither self-evident nor the same in all European countries. High costs, uncertainty about long-term outcomes, and the limited potential of smaller markets create barriers, even when it comes to drugs that offer significant therapeutic potential.
In an effort to address these problems, the World Health Organization has announced the creation of a new European platform, which brings governments, competent authorities, pharmaceutical companies, scientific bodies and patient representatives to the same table.
This is the European Access Dialogue Platform (EADP), which was launched on 2 November 2026 and aims to facilitate timely, affordable and equitable access to new and innovative medicines in the countries of the WHO European Region.
The focus is mainly on high-cost and high-complexity treatments, such as gene and cell therapies and drugs for rare diseases.
According to WHO Europe, many of these treatments are entering the market while there are still important questions about their effectiveness over time.
At the same time, their costs put pressure on the budgets of health systems and can burden patients and their families.
These difficulties, the Organization points out, are particularly acute in smaller markets and in countries with limited purchasing power.
From authorisation to access
The new platform is not a mechanism for authorising medicines nor does it reimburse treatments by national health systems.
Its goal is to create an organized collaborative space, in which the obstacles that appear from the evaluation of a new drug to the actual access of patients to it can be discussed.
Among the issues to be addressed are the evaluation of available scientific data, the management of uncertainty about clinical outcomes, pricing and reimbursement processes, as well as the possibilities of exploiting new payment and procurement mechanisms.
Particular importance is attached to the collection of data from real clinical practice, which can complement the findings of clinical trials and help evaluate treatments after they are launched.
The Director of the Department of Health Systems of WHO Europe, Dr. Natasha Azzopardi Muscat, underlined that no state, paying agency, pharmaceutical company or patient organization can face these challenges alone.
The new platform, he explained, creates the possibility for those involved to jointly examine the difficulties and look for practical solutions.
How it will work
Participation in the EADP is voluntary and the platform is open to all countries of the WHO European Region.
The discussions will be about general problems of access and not negotiations on specific pharmaceuticals or commercially sensitive information.
The topics will be selected by the Steering Committee of the WHO's broader initiative on new medicines, followed by experts and stakeholder representatives.
After the conclusion of each round of discussions, the WHO will publish an anonymous summary of the main conclusions, points of agreement or disagreement and possible next steps.
The recommendations will not be binding and will not replace the decisions of states on the pricing, reimbursement or distribution of medicines.
EADP joins the broader Access to Novel Medicines Platform initiative, which WHO Europe has developed since 2023, with the aim of addressing inequalities in access to new treatments.
