European Integration and mobility

The role of European Integration in Health and Health Systems is often underestimated. Even though there is no EU health system there is an EU health policy that has three broad faces. The first, and most obvious, face is explicit health policies, justified under the treaty provision titled “Public health”. It includes policies with regards to public health, environment, health and safety at work and consumer protection. The second face of EU health policy is less intuitive. It is health policy made on the legal basis of its internal market, and it is far more consequential for health and health care than the first face. It turns the free movement of goods, services, workers and capital into the free movement of pharmaceuticals, medical technologies, patients, health professionals and investment. The third face of EU health policy is the fiscal governance. Initially introduced as a budgetary control mechanism for austerity policies in the aftermath of the economic and financial crisis, it has been enriched with social goals and stepwise transformed into an investment mechanism for modernizing health systems.

European Integration in Health and Health Systems is currently undergoing a thorough transformation. The EU’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic is expanding the role of the European institutions in health policy. A European Health Union is envisaged with a strengthened mandate for explicit health policies and a largely increased budget.

The European Observatory’s work programme focus is to help governments to assess those developments and to understand how the European Integration interacts with national health systems: