My Trial, My Future: European Cancer Research for Every Patient
A European Citizens' Initiative to guarantee every cancer patient — wherever they live — access to the clinical trials that could save their life.
Sign the InitiativeThe Mechanism
What Is a European Citizens' Initiative?
A European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) is a unique EU mechanism that lets citizens directly propose legislation to the European Commission. If we gather at least 1 million signatures from citizens across at least 7 different EU member states, the Commission is required to formally respond to our proposal.
Group Formed
At least 7 EU citizens, from at least 7 different member states, form an organisers' committee.
Initiative Registered
2 monthsThe committee submits the initiative to the European Commission for registration, which has 2 months to accept or refuse it.
Signatures Collected
12 monthsOnce registered, organisers have 12 months to collect at least 1 million statements of support from citizens across at least 7 member states, with country-specific minimum thresholds.
Initiative Submitted
Verified signatures are submitted to the Commission, which publishes the initiative and formally notifies the European Parliament.
Public Hearing
3 monthsWithin 3 months, organisers present the initiative at a public hearing in the European Parliament.
Commission Response
6 monthsWithin 6 months, the Commission must issue a formal response: either adopt the initiative and begin the relevant legislative procedure, or explain why it won't.
We're calling for a dedicated European Cancer Clinical Trials Fund that would:
Fund More Trials, Prioritize Rare Cancers
FundingA dedicated Fund increases financing for clinical studies, prioritizing rare and aggressive cancers that are commercially unattractive for private trial sponsors.
EU cancer research funding is roughly 7x lower than the US National Cancer Institute's single-year budget ($25B vs $3.4B, 2015–2024).
Cross-Border Access, Regardless of Residence
AccessPatients gain the right to access trials across borders, regardless of their member state of residence.
No EU-wide legal framework currently guarantees cross-border clinical trial access.
Close the Cross-Country Survival Gap
EquityThe Fund reduces the current inequality in survival outcomes between member states.
Blood cancer five-year survival is 59.6% in Northern Europe vs. 45% in Eastern Europe.
Faster Approval for EU-Funded Treatments
RegulationTreatments that emerge from EU-funded trials move through accelerated regulatory approval pathways, reaching patients faster — and tools like CTIS evolve from a discovery directory into an actual enrollment right, so finding a trial and accessing it become the same thing.
Clinical trials for all - Ensuring options for everyone.
Sign the InitiativeWhy This Matters
Cancer crosses every line — age, politics, and national borders
Patients with rare and aggressive cancers are too often left behind: their patient populations are small, and the trials needed to help them are expensive and hard to justify within any single country.
The EU is uniquely positioned to change this. By connecting patients across all 27 member states, it can make trials possible that would be impossible for any one country to run alone — turning small, scattered patient populations into one large enough to power life-saving research.
The EU has already begun building a Network of Comprehensive Cancer Centres, aiming for 90% of patients to have access to one by 2030. But even where these centres exist, the trials happening inside them are still concentrated in a handful of countries — meaning geography, not medical need, still decides who gets access to the frontier of cancer treatment. Funding the trials themselves, and connecting patients across borders to reach them, is the missing piece.
Recent shifts in global drug pricing policy are already reducing how quickly new treatments reach European patients, with some medicines being delayed or withdrawn from European markets entirely. This makes EU-led investment in cancer trials more urgent, not less — Europe cannot depend on global pharmaceutical strategy alone to guarantee its patients access to the frontier of cancer treatment.
Read the Full Plan
We're preparing a detailed booklet covering our complete policy proposal, legal basis, and roadmap. It will be available to download here soon.
Download PDF (Coming Soon)