Hello, welcome and thanks for tuning in to ECDC on air, the podcast of the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.

I'm your host, Lee, recording from our headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden.

On today's episode, we're sitting down with Andreas Huffer, expert in microbiology and molecular epidemiology here at ECDC, as well as Rita Figerra, policy officer at the

Directorate General for Health and Food Safety at the European Commission.

Today we'll be discussing European Union reference laboratories, otherwise known as EURLs,

and their role in the future of public health microbiology in Europe.

Thank you. and their role in the future of public health microbiology in Europe. So today we're joined by Andres Heifer from here at ECDC

and Rita Figuera from DIGI Sante.

So, Rita, so before we begin,

could you just explain a little bit about what DG Sante is?

Of course. DG Sante is essentially the part of the European Commission that works on health and food safety.

The official title is the Director General for Health and Food Safety of the European Commission.

So we play a role in many areas

linked to health, such as protecting and improving the public health across the EU. We develop a lot

of health policies, including legislation,

and we ensure coordination between the member states

in this area.

There's also many colleagues working on food safety

and animal and plant health.

So in short, in DGISante, we just help to build a healthier and safer Europe

through our work here, hopefully. Okay, good. So we're going to be talking about EU reference

labs today. What exactly are these? EU reference labs that we also call the URLs.

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