Together For Rare Disease conference outcomes on ‘Boosting EU competitiveness through PPPs in RD’ translate the Rare Disease Moonshot contributions into action for all stakeholders.
The European Union's commitment to strengthening its competitiveness agenda has created unprecedented opportunities for rare disease research and innovation. In 2025, the Rare Disease Moonshot contributed to multiple European Commission consultations (inc. the EU Biotech Act, Multiannual Financial Framework, Life Sciences Strategy, and Competitiveness Compass) to advocate for rare diseases as a strategic priority within EU policy frameworks. In September 2025, T4RD convened a high-level European Parliament conference focused on boosting EU competitiveness through public-private partnerships in rare diseases, bringing together participants from ERNs, research infrastructures, patient organisations, the European Parliament, the European Commission, and the pharmaceutical industry.
The T4RD conference conclusions demonstrate substantial alignment with the Rare Disease Moonshot's policy recommendations across multiple strategic areas. Both initiatives emphasize that the Life Sciences Strategy, adopted in July 2025, aims to strengthen the rare disease ecosystem by improving access to data, tools, actors, and partners for collaboration. The competitiveness framing, both documents argue, opens a unique opportunity to weave biotech and rare diseases into flagship EU funding instruments, including the proposed European Competitiveness Fund (€409 billion initiative targeting strategic sectors including biotech) and Horizon Europe's successor programme FP10 (with €175 billion allocated for 2028-2034).
The alignment extends to key policy instruments including the forthcoming EU Biotech Act and the European Innovation Act (expected Q1 2026), which both the Rare Disease Moonshot and T4RD identify as opportunities for unlocking rare disease research and translation. As noted in the T4RD conference report, biotechnology has been designated as a critical technology within the EU competitiveness framework, representing significant progress for the rare disease ecosystem. This analysis examines the specific points raised by the Rare Disease Moonshot in its 2025 contributions that are explicitly mentioned in the T4RD conference report, demonstrating how stakeholder advocacy through consultation processes has translated into concrete policy recommendations.
Download here the RD Moonshot - T4RD Conference alignement.
