STIs in Europe hit record highs — and the system isn't keeping up
A continent that believed it had largely moved past the bacterial epidemics of previous generations is confronting an uncomfortable reality: sexually transmitted infections have never been more widespread across Europe than they were in 2024. New data published May 21 by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control — the EU’s equivalent of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — amount to a damning assessment of two decades of prevention policy.
At a Glance
Gonorrhea cases across EU and European Economic Area countries rose nearly 300% over the past decade, reaching 106,331 reported cases in 2024 — an all-time high in consolidated continental data
Congenital syphilis — transmitted directly from mother to newborn — nearly doubled between 2023 and 2024, signaling a specific breakdown in prenatal screening systems
The alert now extends beyond populations historically targeted by sexual health campaigns: heterosexual women of reproductive age have emerged as a fast-growing transmission group
This image is used for illustrative purposes only.
A decade of uninterrupted growth
The figures published by the ECDC — the Stockholm-based agency that coordinates infectious disease surveillance across the European Union’s 27 member states and their neighbors — trace a trajectory that nothing has interrupted in ten years. Gonorrhea now accounts for 106,331 annual cases, a rise of nearly 300% over the decade. Syphilis, long treated as a historical footnote, has more than doubled over the same period, reaching 45,577 cases. Chlamydia, the most common bacterial STI by volume, exceeds 213,000 reported cases.
These figures capture only what national health authorities actually report to the ECDC. The true epidemiological picture is structurally underestimated: voluntary testing remains insufficient, treatment delays are too long, and partner notification systems are fragmented across member states.
The return of congenital syphilis: a broken line of prenatal protection
The most alarming figure in the ECDC data does not concern adults. The near-doubling of congenital syphilis cases between 2023 and 2024 represents a qualitatively different warning: an infection transmitted in utero or during childbirth, capable of causing lifelong complications including neurological damage. Its resurgence at this pace points to a breakdown in the prenatal protection chain — screening that comes too late or not at all, uneven access to care, treatment that is insufficiently systematic.
Bruno Ciancio, a unit head at the ECDC, put the stakes plainly: without treatment, these infections cause chronic pain, infertility, and in the case of syphilis, cardiac or neurological complications.
An epidemic that has outgrown targeted policy
Men who have sex with men (MSM) remain the most affected group, with the steepest long-term case increases. European sexual health policy has historically directed most of its resources toward this population — with measurable success in reducing HIV transmission, but apparently insufficient impact on the parallel rise of bacterial STIs within the same community.
What the 2024 data changes is the picture among heterosexual women of reproductive age, where syphilis is now rising on a distinct trajectory. This epidemiological split demands a recalibration of prevention strategy — not a replacement of existing priorities, but an expansion of coverage to a population that current systems are not adequately reaching.
What European health systems failed to anticipate
The ECDC identifies four systemic failures: inadequate access to prevention services, testing delays, slow treatment administration, and ineffective partner notification systems. The diagnosis points to something more structural than a simple resource shortfall.
The sustained underfunding that European public health systems have absorbed since the 2008 financial crisis could have progressively hollowed out the operational capacity of sexual health services — though this causal link is not formally established in the ECDC data itself. Where rapid, free and anonymous testing might have broken transmission chains, delays, costs, or administrative barriers may well have allowed undetected cases to circulate — a hypothesis that is consistent with the gaps the ECDC identifies, without the agency mapping them country by country.
The ECDC is calling on national authorities to urgently update their national strategies and strengthen surveillance systems. The language is institutional — but the message is precise: the tools currently in place are not matching the epidemiological curve.
The bottom line
Europe has some of the most robust public health infrastructure in the world. It has eradicated or contained diseases far more lethal than gonorrhea or syphilis. The resurgence of bacterial STIs is not a biological inevitability — it is a readout of political choices: what a society decides to fund, who it decides to give unobstructed access to care, and which populations it includes in the visible perimeter of its health policy.
The real question these figures raise is not medical. It is political.
Sources: France Info · ECDC — European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control · RTP