9
Feb
2026
Ver
Día Mundial contra el Cáncer (debate)
Madam President, last legislature, I was blessed with being part of BECA – so the cancer strategy, the European cancer strategy – and I studied a lot and I learnt a lot. There are a lot of things we can do to obtain results, and when I say we, I mean the European Parliament and the European institutions. There are some very technical ones: for example, do something about radon, the radioactive natural gas that increases lung cancer by 50 %, and this concerns Italy, the Czech Republic, Finland and other Member States; or overcome the bureaucracy that stops the creation of the European database for rare diseases and paediatric cancer. But, the most important instrument, which will give us results in the fastest time, is to increase cancer screening all across Europe. If you look at a map of Europe, there are some regions in which, for some types of cancers, only 5 % of the people at risk are screened, and the death result is ten times higher than the region where they screen 90 %. So, let's all work together – it doesn't matter what nationality, what political party, whatever – to increase the screening of the most important cancers in Europe to 90 %. We can save hundreds of thousands of lives – even millions of lives – by 2035.