{"id":1117721,"date":"2026-07-29T08:33:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T08:33:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1117721\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T08:33:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T08:33:20","slug":"tackling-the-growing-threat-of-amr-in-the-eu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1117721\/","title":{"rendered":"Tackling the growing threat of AMR in the EU"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"This<\/a>Image: \u00a9 Planet Flem | iStock
\n Eva Hrn\u010d\u00ed\u0159ov\u00e1, Commission Spokesperson for Public Health at the European Commission, outlines the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance and the Commission\u2019s collective efforts in tackling AMR and emerging infectious diseases<\/p>\n

One of the greatest threats to modern medicine is the silent erosion of our body\u2019s defences. Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) already claims more than 35,000 lives annually in the EU\/EEA. If we do not accelerate our efforts, we risk returning to a pre-antibiotic era where routine surgeries and minor infections become life-threatening. The European Union has set ambitious 2030 targets to curb this crisis, but recent data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) flashes an urgent warning sign: we are losing ground where we can least afford to.<\/p>\n

AMR is a growing threat<\/p>\n

While the EU has made encouraging strides in reducing certain infections, our most critical human health targets are currently at serious risk of being missed. Most alarming is the steep rise in bloodstream infections caused by carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae, which have surged by roughly 60% compared to 2019. Carbapenems are \u2018last-line\u2019 antibiotics; they are essential, and when they fail, there is virtually no medical option left to save patients and lives.<\/p>\n

To reverse this trajectory, the European Commission is prioritising immediate, concrete corrective measures. The Commission, in close collaboration with the ECDC, will shortly launch comprehensive new guidelines on Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) in healthcare settings. Member States should rapidly translate these guidelines into action by focusing on hospital fundamentals: mandating stricter screening for resistant bacterial carriage, expanding single-room isolation capacities to halt transmission, and reinforcing dedicated IPC staffing and training across the Union.<\/p>\n

How the EU is supporting a One Health approach<\/p>\n

AMR does not respect the boundaries between hospital wards, livestock farms, and natural ecosystems. Historically, our greatest governance gap has been structural \u2014 addressing human, animal, and environmental health in isolated \u2018silos\u2019.<\/p>\n

To close this gap, the European Commission fundamentally reorganised its own structures and applied a new vision to our work. DG SANTE established a dedicated Directorate for One Health.<\/p>\n

Our One Health Directorate acts as a bridge across sectors, working closely with five EU agencies with core competence in One Health sectors. Through a cross-sectoral One Health Task Force, these agencies now also coordinate, collaborate, and communicate dynamically on risks.<\/p>\n

Rather than leaving farmers to navigate these crisis challenges alone, the EU provides structured support. Under the Common Agricultural Policy, financial incentives directly support the transition to preventative herd management and higher welfare standards. Simultaneously, initiatives like the Better Training for Safer Foods programmes provide continuous, practical education on reducing antibiotic reliance while fully maintaining competitiveness and high standards of animal health.<\/p>\n

These collaborative efforts are already yielding tangible results. The EU has set a target to cut overall sales of antimicrobials for farmed animals and aquaculture by 50% by 2030. We are well on our way, with data already showing an encouraging 28% decrease from 2018 levels. While maintaining this strong initial momentum will require a sustained annual decrease of around 4.4%, Europe\u2019s food producers are proving that a more secure future is entirely within reach.<\/p>\n

Of course, intensive farming environments inherently carry risks of zoonotic spillover \u2013 the transmission of pathogens between animals and humans. This danger is at the top of our political and scientific agenda. Through expert working parties, early warning systems, and strictly harmonized veterinary legislation, we monitor emerging diseases in real time to stamp out potential outbreaks at the source.<\/p>\n

How do we ensure that a policy written in Brussels translates into synchronized action from Helsinki to Valetta? The backbone of our strategy is the comprehensive, harmonized legislative framework stipulated in the EU Treaties and well-organized ecosystem of platforms and working parties. This framework makes the European region entirely unique; it gives us the legal authority to implement uniform surveillance, monitoring, and reporting standards for dangerous pathogens across all 27 Member States. This means it gives us the legal basis to take action, fast.<\/p>\n

The 2023 Council Recommendation on stepping up EU actions to combat AMR in a One Health approach marks the first time the EU has set concrete targets for the human health sector to mitigate AMR and includes recommendations for Member States and the Commission on how to achieve these. Furthermore, the Joint Action on Antimicrobial Resistance and Healthcare-Associated Infections, backed by \u20ac50 million funding from the EU and additional contributions from Member States, directly helps national authorities implement their national action plans on AMR, share molecular surveillance data, and exchange regional best practices, all with the aim of progressing towards the targets and thus curbing AMR.<\/p>\n

But legislation is just the skeleton; collaboration is the lifeblood. Here, Member States regularly convene to share best practices, exchange molecular surveillance data, and hold one another accountable to national action plans.<\/p>\n

The EU possesses the tools, the structural organization, and the scientific backing to address AMR and emerging diseases. What we require now is sustained political commitment at the national level. We must treat the shared data and warnings from our One Health agencies not as a roadmap but as an alert for immediate, coordinated intervention. Our health, our food security, and our collective future depend entirely on defending the antimicrobials that protect us, while remaining ever vigilant against the threat of emerging infectious diseases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Image: \u00a9 Planet Flem | iStock Eva Hrn\u010d\u00ed\u0159ov\u00e1, Commission Spokesperson for Public Health at the European Commission, outlines…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1117722,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[142865,2000,299,5187,2557,1699,273645],"class_list":["post-1117721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-amr","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-european-commission","tag-european-union","tag-oag-051-july-2026"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117002346876479012","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1117721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1117722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1117721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1117721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1117721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}