16/12/2025
🎙️ Roundtable on “European Commission Initiative on Breast Cancer: ECIBC Quality Assurance Scheme”
At our latest Europa Donna roundtable, we had the pleasure of welcoming the European Commission Joint Research Centre’s Agnes Mannik, Aliki Stathopoulou, and Shawn Baldacchino for an overview of the European Commission Initiative on Breast Cancer (ECIBC) and its newly launched Manual for the Quality Assurance (QA) of Breast Cancer Services.
Our speakers outlined the two pillars of the ECIBC:
🔹 Evidence-based European breast cancer guidelines — including 80 recommendations, plain-language summaries for women and ongoing updates, such as new work on AI in screening.
🔹 A comprehensive QA Scheme — published in February 2025, offering a voluntary, modular, step-wise certification pathway to improve the quality and consistency of screening and care across Europe. The Manual was endorsed by the European co-operation for Accreditation (EA) in September 2024 for application in accredited certification.
The QA scheme, already tested in nine countries, provides 64 quality requirements, self-assessment tools, and a clear process to involve national accreditation bodies. Interest is rapidly growing, with screening programmes, breast centres, policymakers, and certification bodies from countries such as Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, and Slovenia already engaging with ECIBC on implementation.
⚠️ Important note: this tool is NOT only for countries in the European Union! It is flexibly designed to be tailored to work in different social and health systems.
Our speakers encouraged advocates to help amplify the impact of the European Commission Quality Assurance Scheme:
✨ Raise awareness and share patient-friendly materials
✨ Engage national authorities and breast units
✨ Promote the value of certified centres
Patient voices remain essential for achieving safe, transparent, and person-centred breast cancer care and for driving demand for high-quality services across Europe.
