EuropeActive and the European fitness and physical activity sector welcome the European Parliament’s draft report on EU cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) strategy and congratulate rapporteur MEP Romana Jerković on her leadership on this critical public health issue. The report addresses many important challenges, and we strongly support its clear emphasis on prevention across the full spectrum of CVD risk factors, including physical inactivity.
We also agree that without sufficient and dedicated funding, the overall response to cardiovascular diseases risks remaining aspirational. Targeted and sustained investment across the full CVD and wider non-communicable disease (NCD) pathway, from prevention to treatment and rehabilitation, is essential.
We particularly welcome the rapporteur’s priorities on:
- Strengthening prevention through dedicated funding and calling for a paradigm shift away from approaches that place responsibility solely on individuals.
- Post-diagnosis care, recognising that treatment does not end with medical intervention and that rehabilitation is essential for return to work, social reintegration, and quality of life.
- The central role of primary care, whose proximity to patients and understanding of risk factors place it in a unique position to support CVD prevention and management, provided it is adequately resourced.
- Addressing comorbidities, as CVDs rarely exist in isolation and frequently coexist with conditions such as diabetes, obesity, and chronic kidney disease.
- Reducing health inequalities, which remain a major driver of unequal CVD outcomes across Europe, particularly for women.
Physical activity is a powerful, evidence-based tool that underpins all of these priorities. It plays a central role in health promotion and disease prevention, supports effective rehabilitation and recovery following diagnosis, and delivers benefits across the wide range of comorbidities commonly associated with CVDs. As such, physical activity must be systematically integrated into primary healthcare, where healthcare professionals are often the first point of contact with patients and are uniquely positioned to provide early, consistent, and effective advice on physical activity as part of CVD prevention, management, and rehabilitation.
While the draft report rightly acknowledges physical inactivity as a major risk factor, its recognition of physical activity remains limited, focusing primarily on urban planning factors such as car dependency, lack of green spaces, and unsafe conditions for walking and cycling. These elements are important, but insufficient on their own.
To meaningfully scale up physical activity levels, a broader approach is needed. Physical inactivity and sedentary behaviour are not solely the result of urban design; they are shaped by policies and practices across multiple sectors, including healthcare, education, workplaces, and community settings as well as the fitness and physical activity sector. With over 71 million participants, fitness is Europe’s most widely practiced form of exercise and plays a crucial role in promoting physical activity across the population. Therefore, broadening the scope beyond urban planning would better reflect the complexity of the challenge and support coordinated, cross-sectoral action to strengthen CVD prevention and rehabilitation.
In addition, the current draft does not include calls on the European Commission to strengthen cross-sectoral collaboration to leverage physical activity through the upcoming Council Recommendation on Health-Enhancing Physical Activity. This represents a key opportunity to encourage Member States to step up efforts to increase population-wide physical activity levels and reverse current trends, where nearly one in three Europeans does not meet the levels required for good health.
EuropeActive has shared its concerns and proposed amendments with shadow rapporteurs and other Members of the European Parliament and will continue to work constructively to strengthen the recognition of physical activity within EU public health policy and discourse.
