JARDIN General Assembly 2026

The JARDIN General Assembly took place from 13 to 15 October 2026 at the Flemings Hotel Wien-Stadthalle in Vienna, Austria.

This meeting brought together JARDIN Competent Authorities and Affiliated Entities, ERN coordinators and ERN members, patient organisation representatives, representatives of the Multi-Stakeholder Advisory Group (MSAG), representatives of the Board of Member States  (BoMS), officers from the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA) and the European Commission, to review the progress of the work packages, discuss project-related challenges and opportunities, and look ahead to the projected outcomes as the Joint Action (JA) moves closer to its final stage. The full agenda of the JARDIN General Assembly is available for download here.

A total of 142 participants registered for the first and second days of the General Assembly, with 140 registered participants joining the final day, reflecting the strong engagement of the JARDIN community and stakeholders throughout the event.

Since the start of the Joint Action at the beginning of 2024, a lot has been achieved towards reaching the overall goal of providing all 27 EU Member States and Norway with a series of tangible results, such as recommendations, guideline documents and blueprints that should:

– help all countries to better integrate the service offerings and achievements of ERNs for rare and complex diseases into their national healthcare systems, and

– be tailored to the individual characteristics of each national healthcare system, taking into account its national, federal, regional and/or local organisation.

The Joint Action has now entered a particularly dynamic phase, marked by the development of evidence-based recommendations, models, and tools, as well as the concrete design and implementation of the various pilots as well as measures to assure the sustainability of the results.

The JARDIN General Assembly therefore offered an important opportunity to reflect on the progress made, discuss the implementation challenges ahead, shape recommendations together and think about the way ahead, with a particular focus on the sustainability of JARDIN’s results beyond the end of the Joint Action.

Across the first two days, participants received updates on progress across the different JARDIN Work Packages, covering topics such as dissemination, evaluation, governance, ERN integration, care pathways, national reference networks, data management and future perspectives beyond JARDIN. The final day was dedicated to interactive workshops, enabling participants to contribute to the development of recommendations on National Rare Disease Plans and Strategies, care coordination, data management and the final JARDIN Communication Blueprint.