Plan Stratégique 2025-2029

Objectives

The 2025–2029 strategic plan of the Federal Public Service for Health, Food Chain Safety and Environment establishes a One World, One Health framework that treats human, animal, plant and environmental health as interdependent, places health considerations across public policy, and aims to protect, promote and restore healthy living.[1][2][3]It combines public-health protection, food-chain safety, healthcare quality, environmental sustainability, crisis resilience and organisational performance within a shared long-term vision.[4][5][6]

• Promote equitable access to high-quality, patient-centred and sustainable healthcare, provide the right care in the right place, reduce health inequalities, and strengthen mental health, integrated care, health-profession capacity and patient safety.[2][3][7][8]
• Prevent avoidable health risks by addressing tobacco, nicotine products, harmful alcohol use, unhealthy diets, addictive substances, psychotropic medicines, gambling, healthcare-associated infections and other determinants of non-communicable disease.[9][10][11][12]
• Protect food safety, healthy nutrition, animal health, plant health and consumers through science-based standards, modern regulation, disease prevention, sustainable crop protection and control of regulated products.[3][9][13][14]
• Strengthen preparedness for infectious-disease outbreaks, zoonoses, pandemics, chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear incidents, and other collective health emergencies.[15][16][17][18]
• Advance climate, biodiversity, pollution, chemicals, circular-economy, marine-protection and environmental-health policies, including climate neutrality by 2050 and a just transition that protects vulnerable populations.[19][20][21][6]
• Develop a modern, resilient public service through efficient resource use, digitalisation, integrated data management, evidence use, staff development, leadership, integrity, transparency and wellbeing.[22][23][24][25]

Implementation

Implementation relies on coordinated action across the Federal Public Service’s directorates-general, integrated support services and Medex, translating the strategic plan into operational objectives and annual plans.[26][27][28]Delivery is designed to be evidence-based, risk-informed, participatory and adaptive, combining policy development, regulation, service provision, inspection, emergency management, data systems and international representation.[29][30][31][32]

• Coordinate policy across federal, regional and community authorities, using interministerial conferences, cooperation agreements and structured consultation to address shared health, environmental and crisis-management responsibilities.[33][30][34][35]
• Collaborate with scientific and advisory institutions, including Sciensano, the Belgian Health Care Knowledge Centre, universities and relevant international organisations, to use current evidence, reliable data, research and risk assessment in policy-making.[1][36][37][38]
• Engage citizens, patient and consumer bodies, healthcare professionals, civil society, businesses, agricultural and food sectors, professional associations and local communities through consultation, co-creation, information-sharing and differentiated participation.[39][40][41][42]
• Represent and coordinate Belgian positions within the European Union and international bodies, including the World Health Organization, Food and Agriculture Organization, United Nations Environment Programme, World Organisation for Animal Health, European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and European Commission.[36][43][44][45]
• Deliver regulatory functions through authorisations, licensing, accreditation, standards, risk-based controls, inspections, enforcement, administrative sanctions and cooperation with customs and other inspection services.[46][47][48][49]
• Maintain crisis readiness through updated emergency plans, health surveillance, designated points-of-entry controls, strategic stockpiles, specialised response teams, civil-military cooperation, crisis communication and national and international exercises.[15][50][51][52]
• Use digital case management, interoperable databases, dashboards, secure health-information systems and appropriately governed emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence where relevant, to improve services and emergency decision-making.[22][24][53][54]
• Monitor policy effects, risk factors, health threats, service quality and organisational performance through measurable objectives, key performance indicators where feasible, inspections, audits, external evaluations, risk management and quality-management systems.[29][55][51][31]
• Report implementation annually through the chair’s progress report to competent ministers, link strategic and operational plans to staff objectives, and subject strategic-plan delivery to a system-wide methodological evaluation during the final year of the legislative term.[28][56]
• Manage resources within the budgetary framework through dialogue with political authorities, needs-based allocation, financial monitoring, procurement planning and retention of verified efficiency gains where agreed.[4][57][58][28]

Monitoring & Evaluation

The strategy establishes an organisation-wide monitoring, evaluation and accountability approach across public health, food safety, animal and plant health, environmental policy, healthcare, emergency preparedness, medical expertise and support services. It combines measurable objectives, key performance indicators, risk management, surveillance, inspections, quality management, external evaluation and annual reporting, although many operational sections do not specify indicator definitions or targets.[59][29][28]

• Define measurable objectives and action plans for preventable risk factors, monitor implementation, assess impacts where possible, and adapt measures in response to evaluation findings.[29][60][12][61]
• Use key performance indicators where feasible to steer service delivery, including emergency medical assistance, regulatory processing and wider operational services.[62][30][31][63]
• Apply organisation-wide risk and quality management to identify, control and review events that may prevent objectives being achieved, including information technology, database, cyber-security, chemical, climate, workforce and budgetary risks.[36][22][24][53]
• Maintain surveillance of health threats through epidemiological and genomic data, real-time collection, points-of-entry monitoring, food and animal-health controls, field inspection intelligence and international information-sharing.[9][44][64][52]
• Use risk-based annual audit and inspection planning, drawing on risk analyses and prior audit findings, to prioritise enforcement in regulated consumer products, environmental protection and emergency-related activities.[48][57][49]
• Evaluate policies through independent studies, external evaluation, scientific advice, research evidence, audit findings and, in some areas, regular review of plans, crisis exercises and post-incident assessments.[10][51][65][20]
• Report annually on implementation of legislative-term strategies and operational objectives, with the chair submitting the report to competent ministers by 15 March of the following calendar year and sending a copy to the Federal Public Service Policy and Support.[56]
• Undertake a methodological, system-wide review of strategic-plan implementation during the final calendar year of the legislative term, with evaluation criteria set by the College of Presidents at the start of the term.[56]
• Produce specific recurring reports, including monthly reports on health risks and interventions at major points of entry and an annual climate-policy progress synthesis report.[52][66]

Accountability is supported by management control, legal and complaints mechanisms, parliamentary budgetary oversight, consultation structures, individual staff objectives linked to strategic and operational plans, and Finance Inspectorate verification of claimed efficiency gains.[27][28][56][67]The source does not provide a single consolidated indicator catalogue, common targets, comprehensive reporting calendar, surveillance dataset or uniform public-accountability framework for the full strategy.[29][35][68]

Costing & Financing

Financing is framed primarily through resource efficiency, budgetary control, multiannual planning, activity-based budgeting and targeted management of sectoral funds rather than a fully quantified strategy-wide costed plan. The extracts identify several funding responsibilities and mechanisms, but generally do not state overall allocations, funding gaps, unit costs or macroeconomic assumptions.[32][68][28]

• Manage hospital financing through an annual budget of more than 11 billion euros, while pursuing more transparent, pathology-oriented financing focused increasingly on outcomes, collaboration and innovation.[27][8]
• Use Article 63 budgets within the Budget of Financial Means to support pilot projects in general and psychiatric hospitals on multidisciplinary quality of care, innovation and hospital telematics.[8][69]
• Provide structural financing for high-intensity care unit services and mobile crisis and emergency teams, and expand child and adolescent psychiatry programming, while extending prison drug-support projects subject to budget availability.[70]
• Manage the animal-health and quality fund, the plant-production and protection fund, and the Raw Materials and Products Fund, including compulsory contributions, reserves, compensation payments, fines and sector contributions.[30][71][72]
• Maintain the Raw Materials and Products Fund on a zero-balance basis and monitor budgetary envelopes to preserve essential functions.[71]
• Seek structural funding for recurring activities, including the knowledge centre on antibiotic use and antimicrobial resistance in animals.[73]
• Develop a national biodiversity financing plan and a Belgian sustainable-finance strategy, and use climate-mechanism revenues exclusively for climate measures and compensation for affected citizens and businesses.[21][35]
• Prepare a Social Climate Plan with the regions to access Social Climate Fund resources for households and businesses affected by price increases related to the second emissions-trading system.[21]
• Introduce activity-based budgeting as a foundation for performance-based budgeting and spending reviews, while structuring human-resources and budget data to support recurring activities and resource decisions.[32][58][74]

The fiscal context includes deficit reduction, expenditure control, inflation pressure, uncertain information-technology investment returns and pressure for short-term savings.[75][76][2]Under an unchanged-policy scenario, government commits to resources needed for essential tasks within required timeframes, subject to the overall budgetary context; verified efficiency gains are intended to remain available to the service.[28]No comprehensive quantified costing, funding-gap assessment or economic model is supplied.[26][28]