We very much regret the recent controversy surrounding patient group funding. The European Cancer Patient Coalition sincerely hopes that the valuable and serious work of patient groups continues to be recognised.

ECPC has been established to represent the views of cancer patients in the European healthcare debate and to provide a forum for all EUROPEAN CANCER PATIENTS to exchange information and share best practice.

ECPC’s mission is to serve its membership and support the millions of people living with cancer or caring for a family member, who otherwise would not have the opportunity to make their voice heard in Europe.

Ideally ECPC would wish to be in a position where we could do our work without financial support from industry. However, there are hardly any non-commercial sources prepared to fund patient groups at a European level. This presents European patient groups with the harsh reality: either to accept some commercial funding and balance this with as much as possible other sources or stop our work altogether.

As a non-profit organization, relying on many volunteers, we try hard to raise money for our professional work from a wide variety of sources and accept industry funding under the strictest, “arms length” conditions. ECPC is fortunate to have received core grants from the European School of Oncology which allows us to benefit from balanced sources of funding.

Our credibility, transparency and our democratic representation is our most treasured asset. This is why ECPC took a good year of careful planning to work out our organization, operation and funding structures. We have developed a transparent and robust policy for commercial funding. Please see our Funding Policy on our website. We encourage our members to adopt this model when seeking funding from commercial sources.

We owe it to our membership and patients across Europe, who have placed their trust in us, to act in a fully democratic, independent and transparent manner, according to the highest standards of good governance. We derive our legitimacy from our membership, ECPC’s constitution and democratically elected board of whom more than half are cancer survivors.

We are most anxious to work on a constructive approach together with all stakeholders to ensure the credibility of patient groups is safeguarded.

ECPC, 26 July 2005