Political Guidelines | Ursula von der Leyen – Candidate for the European Commission President
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2025. We will also step up our green
diplomacy and engage more with non-EU
countries on external aspects of our policies.
To achieve our climate objectives, we also
need to make it easier for people to shift to
more sustainable options. This is notably the
case with mobility. Cross-border train travel
is still too difficult for many citizens. People
should be able to use open booking systems
to purchase trans-European journeys with
several providers, without losing their right
to reimbursement or compensatory travel.
To this end we will propose a Single Digital
Booking and Ticketing Regulation, to
ensure that Europeans can buy one single
ticket on one single platform and get
passengers’ rights for their whole trip.
Reaching climate neutrality by 2050 will
require a wide range of innovative
technologies, in areas from mobility to
energy. For instance, the 2035 climate
neutrality target for cars creates predictability
for investors and manufacturers. Getting
there will require a technology-neutral
approach, in which e-fuels have a role to play
through a targeted amendment of the
regulation as part of the foreseen review.
A more circular and resilient
economy
Working to decarbonise our economy will be
part of our continued shift to a more
sustainable pattern of production and
consumption, retaining the value of resources
in our economy for longer.
This will be the purpose of a new Circular
Economy Act, helping to create market
demand for secondary materials and a single
market for waste, notably in relation to
critical raw materials.
We will put forward a new chemicals
industry package, aiming to simplify
REACH and provide clarity on “forever
chemicals”, or PFAS.
We must make our economy more resilient
and less dependent.
This is notably important in the health and
pharmaceutical sector. The EU has been
confronted with severe shortages of medical
devices and medicines, with antibiotics,
insulin, painkillers and other products
becoming particularly difficult to obtain.
To remedy this, we will propose a Critical
Medicines Act to reduce dependencies
relating to critical medicines and ingredients,
particularly for products where there are only
a few supplying manufacturers or countries.
This will be part of our work to complete the
European Health Union with diversified
supply chains, access to the most advanced
treatments, more resilient health systems and
strategic inventories of key medicines. We
must continue our work on anti-microbial
resistance.
We will also step up our work on preventive
health, in particular for mental health,
including at work, and cardiovascular
diseases, as well as on treatments for
degenerative illnesses and research on
autism. This will build on the successful
model of the Beating Cancer Plan.
We must also do more to protect the security
of our health systems, which are increasingly
the target of cyber and ransomware attacks.
To improve threat detection, preparedness
and crisis response, I will propose a
European action plan on the cybersecurity
of hospitals and healthcare providers in
the first 100 days of the mandate.
Boosting productivity with
digital tech diffusion
Europe’s competitiveness is hamstrung by its
lower productivity compared to its direct
global competitors. Central to this is the
insufficient diffusion of digital technologies,
impacting our ability to use tech to develop
new services and business models.