Dear EAN members, colleagues, and friends,
As we head towards the midpoint of 2026, I am pleased to be able give you an update from the EAN Scientific Committee on various topics. As always, there is a lot happening, and all of it positive.
The Panel Management Group elections held in late 2025 went smoothly and resulted in a fresh set of contributors joining the Management Groups to help influence the EAN’s scientific direction. We welcome the new panel leadership and thank them for taking on a broad portfolio of responsibilities. At the same time, we would like to sincerely thank those members who have stepped down from the Management Groups for their valuable contributions, dedication, and commitment over the past years.
One of the panels’ newest activities we would like to draw your attention to is their contribution to the new EAN Panel Yearbook. The EAN Panel Yearbook 2025, released during the EAN Congress 2025, was very well received, so a second edition is now in progress and planned to be published ahead of this year’s congress. Most recently, the panels reviewed the EMA Union list of critical medicines where they were given the chance to propose new medicines or to suggest removing existing medicines, making EAN’s involvement and contributions crucial to safeguarding essential treatments and managing supply risks in the EU.
Another particularly engaged group are the members of the various Guideline Task Forces and the Guideline Production Group. Thanks to their efforts, we have already published one new guideline in 2026, on the diagnostic approach to oligo/asymptomatic hyperCKemia, with another submitted for publication, on the management of encephalitis due to infection in adults. High‑quality clinical guidelines are crucial to ensuring consistent, evidence‑based patient care across Europe. Recognising this, EAN continues to invest in guidance and capacity‑building, with a new cohort now progressing through the CoCoCare programme to develop core guideline skills, and with applications open for the next EAN Guidelines Workshop in Geneva, ahead of the EAN Congress 2026.
I am also delighted to share that we have recently launched another exciting addition to our scientific training opportunities: the Certificate in Clinical Research in Neurology (CCRN) developed to support the next generation of clinical researchers. The first edition of this two-year programme tailored for residents, trainees, and research fellows attracted a lot of interest and is now ready to kick off at the forthcoming congress in Geneva, with 25 eager participants now selected. I am looking forward to the first reports from this great initiative.
With this new project just beginning, two long running projects are ending. EBRAINS 2.0,the EU-funded project aiming to establish new standards for brain atlases, connect multimodal brain data and advance digital twin approaches, will end in 2026, with EAN completing the final set of deliverables. The project will conclude with a special issue of the European Journal of Neurology, published as an EAN in‑kind contribution and titled Digital Health Research in Clinical Neurosciences. I encourage you to keep an eye out for this publication.
Following a six-year run, the EAN’s own ENERGY (the EAN NEuro-covid ReGistrY) project,has also now come to a close.Launched in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic to shed light on the burden and general characteristics of neurological complications of the COVID-19 outbreak, the registry collected a great amount of data from investigators and teams throughout the world, forming a comprehensive global registry dedicated to neuro-COVID. You can read an excellent closing summary of ENERGY in our report here: The ENERGY Project: A Global Collaborative Response to the Neurological Impact of COVID-19 – eanNews. I would like to thank everyone who contributed to or was otherwise involved in this successful undertaking.
Last but not least, I would like to inform you that we are currently updating the EAN Country Fact Sheets, which provide an overview of the burden of neurological diseases across the European population, based on epidemiological, economic, and demographic data. The current versions are available on the EAN website (EAN Country Fact Sheets – ean.org), and an updated edition will be presented during the EAN Congress 2026.
Finally, I offer a sincere thank you to all working groups involved in all our scientific activities. A huge amount of work goes into initiating and managing our projects and this is certainly never taken for granted. Your active participation is much appreciated!
Best wishes
Gereon R. Fink
EAN Scientific Committee Chair
