The aim of this guidance document is to provide EU/EEA Member States and EU bodies with relevant information to make an informed decision on routine vaccination of healthy children and pregnant women with seasonal influenza vaccine. The options presented in this document are based on a systematic review of the literature and the opinions of a group of independent experts.

Overview of vaccination recommendations and coverage rates in the EU Member States for the 2013–14 and 2014–15 influenza seasons.

Overall the evidence base for the efficacy and effectiveness of newer and enhanced influenza vaccines appears limited at present, with a number of potentially relevant studies identified as ongoing.

This report provides an update on seasonal influenza immunisation policies and vaccination coverage rates in EU/EEA Member States for the 2012–13 influenza season.

This publication presents the core European protocol for a series of proposed influenza vaccine effectiveness studies. The protocol includes a proposed plan for pooled analysis and has recently been adapted to measure vaccine effectiveness for the pandemic vaccine in 2009-10. Together with its twin publication ‘Protocols for cohort database studies to measure influenza vaccine effectiveness in the EU and EEA Member States’, this publication covers all methodological issues in the design and implementation of vaccine effectiveness studies, both for seasonal and the new A(H1N1)v influenza.