Healthy Lifestyle: Commission launches a European-wide campaign

The Commission launched the HealthyLifestyle4All campaign to promote a healthy lifestyle for all, across generations and social groups, with the objective to improve the health and well-being of Europeans. Linking sport and active lifestyles with health, food and other policies, this two-year campaign involves civil society, non-governmental organisations, national, local and regional authorities and international bodies. All involved will implement several actions for Europeans to be more active and more mindful of their health.

The actions will support the three objectives of the HealthyLifestyle4All campaign:

• Raise more awareness for healthy lifestyles across all generations;
• Support an easier access to sport, physical activity and healthy diets, with a special focus on inclusion and non-discrimination to reach and involve disadvantaged groups;
• Promote a global approach across policies and sectors, linking food, health, well-being and sport.

All participating organisations can submit a commitment for concrete actions in the online Pledge Board. Several EU countries and organisations, such as the International and European Olympic Committees, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the International School Sport Federation, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), and the World Health Organization (WHO) already submitted their contribution, with many more to be expected.

As a coordinator of the campaign, the Commission will implement several actions in the next two years, including for example:

• Increase funding for projects supporting a healthy lifestyle in the Erasmus+, Horizon Europe and EU4Health For 2021-2027, €470 million will be available for sport actions under Erasmus+, €290 million under Horizon Europe, and €4.4 million under EU4Health;
• Create a new #BeActive Across Generations Award to recognise the importance of Sport across different ages;
• Launch an EU Mobile App for cancer prevention to raise awareness of the importance of healthy lifestyles for cancer prevention, supporting the goals of Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan;
• Develop and update a food ingredients database containing information on the nutritional quality of processed food products sold in the EU to promote healthier food products and reduce the consumption of less healthy food products high in sugar, fat and salt. A harmonised mandatory front-of-pack nutrition labelling will further support that objective as well as the EU Code of Conduct on responsible food business and marketing practices that entered in force in July 2021;
• Address the issue of healthy and sustainable diets, and the importance of physical activity and mental health in schools. The Commission will review the EU School fruit, vegetables and milk scheme and will streamline the concept of healthy lifestyles in its recommendation on education;
• Support evidence-based policy making for healthy lifestyles with the Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Knowledge Gateway and the Knowledge Centre on Cancer.

The launch of the campaign coincides with the start of the European Week of Sport 2021, which takes place from 23 to 30 September across Europe under the patronage of three great European athletes: Beatrice Vio, Jorge Pina and Sergey Bubka. Thousands of events, online and in situ, will highlight the power of physical activity to bring joy, build resilience and connect generations. Since its first edition in 2015, the European Week of Sport has become the largest European campaign for promoting sport and physical activity. The 2020 European Week of Sport (EWoS) saw a record participation of 15.6 million active participants in over 32,000 events across Europe.

More information

Press release – European Commission