The #BecauseHormonesMatter campaign is going global in 2025, with the first-ever World Hormone Day on Thursday 24 April 2025  

Building on the success of European Hormone Day over the last three years, plans are underway to take the campaign worldwide in 2025. World Hormone Day will bring together the endocrine community around the world to raise awareness of the importance of good hormone health. Under the banner of #BecauseHormonesMatter, we’ll share the “small steps” everyone can take to improve hormone health, individually and within our communities.  

In addition to raising public awareness, the campaign also aims to improve national political engagement. ESE’s own activities will focus on the European policy environment, including supporting our stakeholders to improve their engagement with national and European political representatives.  

How to take part  
- Join in the conversation on social media using the hashtags #BecauseHormonesMatter and #WorldHormoneDay  
- Hold online or in-person events to promote the small steps everyone can take to achieve good hormone health  
- Reach out to local or national media to encourage coverage of World Hormone Day  
- Identify “endocrine champions” who can help amplify the message  
- Talk to local, national and regional policymakers and organisations who can help drive improvements in research, diagnosis and treatment.  

To support planning, ESE will provide a Public Outreach Toolkit and Policy Toolkit with guidance and resources to download and share.  

Actions you can take NOW!  
Before and after 24 April, we encourage you to use #BecauseHormonesMatter on endocrine-related awareness days or public-facing activities to help amplify the impact of those campaigns. #BecauseHormonesMatter is a year-round message that links efforts to highlight the vital role of hormones in health and disease. We have published an updated printable calendar of annual awareness-raising days, weeks and months with a link to endocrine health, with upcoming events listed on our new Awareness Days Online Diary. (There is also a form to suggest additional awareness days to feature on this page.) You can also follow @BecauseHormonesMatter on Instagram, where we share public-facing information about hormone health and celebrate the community’s activities.  

Find out more at: worldhormoneday.org.  

Narrow support for the new Commission signals problems on the horizon 
After some turbulent weeks, the Commission headed by Ursula von der Leyen has now been officially approved by the European Parliament with 370 votes for, 282 against and 36 abstentions. The majority is much less than at the start of her previous term when 461 MEPs supported the appointment of the new Commission. 

Ms von der Leyen is set to face a more critical European Parliament in the coming years. This may impede some of her plans including for health and environment. A possible first sign of the difficulties Ms von der Leyen and her colleagues could be facing became apparent during the last plenary of the European Parliament in Strasbourg (25 - 28 November 2024) when Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) failed to agree a position on a nonbinding decision on smoking and vaping restrictions.

But there is also some good news for Ms von der Leyen as, unlike during her first term and for the first time since 1999, no individual Commissioners were rejected by the European Parliament following the hearings, despite several facing fierce criticism during their individual hearings. Some political bargaining between the European People’s Party, the Socialists and Democrats and the Renew Europe Group enabled the Commission to get the necessary votes and start its work on 1 December.  

What is on the cards for health and environment? 
For the European endocrine community, the key Commissioners are: 

- Olivér Várhelyi (Hungary), Commissioner for Health and Animal Welfare 
- Jessika Roswall (Sweden), Commissioner for Environment, Water Resilience and a Competitive Circular Economy 
- Ekaterina Zaharieva (Bulgaria), Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation 

We provided an extensive overview of the main topics they will be working on in the last EARS Newsletter (September 2024). However, Commissioners have some discretion as to what, when and how to address the files within their portfolios.  

The hearings provided some insights as to what we can expect from these three Commissioners:  

During her hearing, Jessika Roswall made a commitment to improve information requirements for endocrine disruptors in the proposed revision of REACH under the new Chemicals Industry Package. This will help close information gaps and improve control. She also pledged to ban Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from consumer products as well as restrict their use in industrial applications. 

Olivér Várhelyi was, and has remained, one of the more controversial picks of the European Commission and was the only one who had to answer additional questions following his hearing on 6 November. While eventually accepted, several files of his portfolio were transferred to Hadja Lahbib, including sexual and reproductive rights and HERA - Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority. Some in Brussels concluded that there were now ‘two Health Commissioners’ in practice.  

However, Mr Várhelyi does hold on to overseeing the Critical Medicines Act and will lead the work on biotechnologies, launch a revision of EU medical devices legislation and tobacco products rules, and implement the EU Beating Cancer Plan and initiate a similar initiative to tackle cardiovascular diseases. Of specific interest for endocrinology are his pledges to mitigate pesticide risks, promote non-chemical alternatives, and maintain the EU’s high food safety standards. 

In her introductory remarks, Commissioner-designate Ekaterina Zaharieva expressed her desire to place Research and Innovation (R&I) at the heart of the EU's competitiveness agenda. She pledged to propose a European Innovation Act, to push Member States to meet the 3% spending target on R&I, avoid brain drain, defend freedom of research, invest in R&I infrastructure and expand the European Research Council. She also committed to improve the governance and the ownership of the Missions, with one of the five missions focusing on beating cancer. Finally, she mentioned that she is in favour of a strong simplification for EU research funding through a two-phase application process to minimise red tape. 

Besides these three Commissioners who will play an important role in initiating and/or implementing policies that will affect endocrinology, Stéphane Séjourné (France), Executive Vice President for Prosperity and Industrial Strategy, is another Commissioner to keep an eye on. He is expected to play a central role in one of the key priorities of the Commission which is to make the European industry more competitive vis à vis the United States and China. There are concerns within the NGO and medical community that this may come at the cost of European health and environment.

The reports by Manuel Heitor and Mario Draghi  
Discussions are well under way to boost competitiveness in Europe and stimulate growth through, amongst other measures, more investment in cutting-edge research to better compete with the US and, to a lesser extent, China. The US is currently outperforming the EU in terms of economic growth including in research and innovation. Despite numerous efforts by the European Union and its member states to address this gap, it has been growing over the past few years.  

To narrow or eliminate this gap, the European Commission asked former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi last year to deliver a report to outline the main challenges for the European economy accompanied by solutions to address these issues. In September, the 400-page report was published to guide the work for Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The report contained numerous recommendations including to enhance academic excellence, invest in research infrastructure, increase R&D spending, and foster a more innovation-friendly regulatory ecosystem. In total, the Draghi report calls for an €800 billion additional investment within the EU per year.  

Not long after the Draghi report, Manuel Heitor, former Portuguese Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education, published his report, “Align, act, accelerate”, which provides strategic recommendations on maximising the impact of EU Research and Innovation programmes in the future and serves to inform the next EU Research Framework Programme – FP10 (2028-2034). The report strongly recommends that Europe double its research funding and simplify procedures. Only by placing research and innovation at the centre, can Europe compete effectively at the global level according to Mr Heitor.  

How will the Draghi and Heitor report affect European health research? 
The question is now how these reports will inform the work of the Commission and what consequences there may be for health research. While there is hope that the application process will become less burdensome, the calls to significantly raise the budget for research will be more difficult to realise. A substantial additional amount of money is required, which could be raised by significantly increasing the overall EU budget or by reallocating funds from other parts of the EU budget.  

Increasing the EU budget to the benefit of research and innovation seems unlikely given the current strong ‘Eurosceptic wind’ that is blowing through Europe, in combination with many EU Member States making significant budgetary cuts at the national level (including France and Italy). Therefore, it is more likely that money is reallocated from other areas of the budget, for example from regional funding, but this will obviously be met with a lot of resistance by Member States who benefit from these funding streams. Additionally, European defence has become an important part of the EU’s portfolio and is likely to use up a lot of the available funding in the years to come.  

Budget discussions at the EU level have always been notoriously difficult and there is a reason that the newly appointed European Council President António Costa (Portugal) set a time limit for all European Council meetings except those around budgets.  

Only time will tell what all the above means for the future of health research at the EU level and whether endocrinologists will have more opportunities to receive funding through one of the many research funding schemes available.  

What are the next steps towards FP10 and how will ESE attempt to influence the upcoming negotiations? 
More will become clear within the next six or seven months when the Commission will publish an interim evaluation of Horizon Europe (expected in January 2025) and its proposal for FP10 (expected before 1 July). After that, FP10 is mainly in the hands of the European Parliament and the Member States who, under the guidance of the Commission, shall agree on a final text.  

Along with our partners, ESE plans to actively engage with the different stages of the negotiations towards FP10 through meetings with key stakeholders and public statements explaining the importance of endocrine research. At the core of its efforts will be the upcoming publication and dissemination of EndoCompass - Research Roadmap for Better Hormone Health.  

For more information about ongoing EU research funding opportunities please visit the European Research Funding section on the ESE website.   

The Toys Safety Regulation is one of the leftovers from the previous legislative term. The September EARS newsletter briefly touched upon this legislative file, as it is an important piece of legislation addressing the continuous high exposure of the EU population to EDCs.  

The negotiations for the new Toys Safety Regulation are now in their final stage. On 20 November the Council and European Parliament had their first exchange where they formally outlined their positions. Negotiations are expected to be finalised in the first quarter of 2025.  

ESE remains concerned about the unambitious position of the Council, consisting of the EU Member States, which, unlike the European Parliament, isn’t supportive of a more comprehensive ban of EDCs in toys and the environment in general. We support the recently published statement by the European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology (ESPE), which calls for a ban of all EDCs in children’s toys following their harmful impact on growth and overall development. As outlined in this Statement, toys remain a key source of EDC exposure for children with 25% containing harmful chemicals.  

You can show your support by liking and sharing ESPE’s or ESE’s social media posts on this or by posting your own comment.  

What does it mean to have the EU Presidency? 
On 1 January 2025, Poland will take over the six-month presidency of the Council of the EU. This means that Poland will be able to set the EU agenda and chair all the meetings at every level in the Council. Together with two other Presidencies in groups of three, called 'trios', it sets long-term goals and prepares a common agenda determining the topics and major issues that will be addressed by the Council over an 18-month period. Based on this programme, each of the three countries prepares its own more detailed six-month programme. The other two countries in the trio are Denmark (second half of 2025) and Cyprus (first half of 2026).  

What are the (health) priorities of the Polish EU Presidency? 
Poland’s priorities will focus on digital transformation of healthcare, the promotion of preventive measures, and addressing healthcare challenges within the context of demographic changes. It will also guide the work of the Council on important legislative files including the pharmaceutical package, which strives for more accessible and affordable medicines. Poland can expect some tough negotiations around this file which is heavily lobbied by the pharmaceutical industry who firmly oppose some of the current proposals by the European Commission. Representatives of innovative companies for example fear that the shortening of the data protection period from eight to six years, as envisaged in the European Commission's proposal, will in practice hinder the development of innovation in Europe.

Health will face fierce competition from other topics. Security will be on the top of the Polish Presidency agenda with a focus on seven key pillars: external, energy, economic, food, climate, health and information security. As part of their ambitions within health security, they aim to strengthen the EU’s independence in medicine production and addressing mental health challenges, especially among children and young adults.