Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Projects
    • Corporate Taxation in a Globalised Era
    • US Election 2020
    • The Transformation of Work
    • The Coronavirus Crisis and the Welfare State
    • Just Transition
    • Artificial intelligence, work and society
    • What is inequality?
    • Europe 2025
    • The Crisis Of Globalisation
  • Audiovisual
    • Audio Podcast
    • Video Podcasts
    • Social Europe Talk Videos
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Shop
  • Membership
  • Ads
  • Newsletter

Our good health: economic fuel or core value?

by Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis, Gediminas Cerniauskas and Birute Tumiene on 14th January 2021 @V_Andriukaitis

TwitterFacebookLinkedIn

Solidarity in health has never been so urgent or imperative—a European Health Union would be its ideal expression.

European health union
Vytenis Andriukaitis

A European Health Union (EHU) appears to be emerging on the horizon. The notion was coined in the crucible of the pandemic last spring and catapaulted to the level of European Union policy by the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, a few months later.

For years Eurobarometer surveys had shown public demand for ‘more Europe’ in health. In a 2019 survey, the five priorities for the EU in the years ahead, according to young people, were: protecting the environment and fighting climate change (67 per cent), improving education and training (56 per cent), fighting poverty and economic and social inequalities (56 per cent), boosting employment (49 per cent) and improving health and well-being (44 per cent). Only the crash induced by Covid-19 seems however to have awoken the political will to act.

European health union
Gediminas Cerniauskas

As one public-health veteran put it bitterly at the European Health Forum Gastein 2020, ‘Health has been the Cinderella of public policymaking for a long time, nobody would listen, and we never got to go to the ball. Now we are the equivalent of the princess at the ball and everyone wants to dance with us.’ Unfortunately, there are still many reasons to doubt this ‘Cinderella’ story has a happy ending.

Get our latest articles straight to your inbox!

"Social Europe publishes thought-provoking articles on the big political and economic issues of our time analysed from a European viewpoint. Indispensable reading!"

Polly Toynbee

Columnist for The Guardian

Thank you very much for your interest! Now please check your email to confirm your subscription.

There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again.

Powered by ConvertKit
European health union
Birute Tumiene

Largely restricted

Health has never been accepted as a major EU policy area for solidarity and co-operation. It is not even itemised among the objectives identified in article 3 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU, consolidated version). It does appear in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU): article 4 includes ‘common safety concerns in public health matters’ among competences shared with member states and article 168 is devoted to public health. But the EU role is largely restricted, as under article 2, to ‘action to support, coordinate or supplement the actions of Member States’.

Paradoxically, it is in the legal tradition to ground European regulations with important consequences for health in article 114 of the TFEU, linked to development of the single market (article 26)—as if good health were best framed as fuel for EU economies. Joint actions for health per se are confined to extreme cases: a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council of the EU, approved in response to the pandemic last March, affirms that ‘the EU should intervene only in cases where a Member State is deemed no longer to be able to cope with a crisis alone and requires assistance’.

This inertia prevails against the allowance in article 5 of the TEU, on subsidiarity, for EU action in the arena of shared competences ‘by reason of the scale or effects of the proposed action’. It has been compounded historically by very limited explicit allocations to health in the EU budget: until recently, commitments to health never exceeded 1 per cent of the apportionments to the Common Agricultural Policy.

Asking for more

But does it matter to our citizens? Even if cautious about a high tax burden, European citizens are asking for more high-quality health services and are ready to pay more via health-insurance contributions or general taxation.

For decades, demand for health services has grown faster than the total economy, pushing up the share of gross domestic product devoted to healthcare. The most recent available Eurostat figures (2018) show that employment in health exceeds 9.9 million in the eurozone and is nearly twice as high as in agriculture, forestry, fishing, mining and quarrying and manufacture of basic metals—the dominant sectors at the start of European integration—combined (5.9 million).

The value of good health cannot however be defined only in monetary terms: it comprises one of the cultural backbones of our European civilisation, one of the mainstays of European wellbeing. And in a Europe much more interconnected since the Lisbon treaty, Europeans enjoy freedom of movement to live, work and travel—and use healthcare resources along the way.


We need your help! Please support our cause.


As you may know, Social Europe is an independent publisher. We aren't backed by a large publishing house, big advertising partners or a multi-million euro enterprise. For the longevity of Social Europe we depend on our loyal readers - we depend on you. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

European solidarity in health has never been so urgent and imperative, in view of member states’ failures to manage the pandemics. But the need had been evident for years, confronting common challenges in vaccination, antimicrobial resistance and mobilisation of the scarce resources required for complex treatments while ensuring nobody is left behind in access to quality healthcare.

Common price negotiations are also needed for expensive medicines and technologies. And while all of us would like to benefit from medical innovations—personalised medicine or individualised care made possible by artificial intelligence and digital health applications—the competitiveness of Europe in research and development is increasingly lagging, associated with insufficient and inefficient collaborative funding.

Time to act

In the Manifesto for a European Health Union, we say the time to act is now, if not yesterday. Public health is among the ‘societal challenges’ to be addressed by the Conference on the Future of Europe. Agreement by European leaders to an EHU would be the perfect outcome of the 2020-21 political season and a highly welcome first step towards European health policies truly based on common European values.

Three scenarios are possible:

  • utilising existing legal, financial and managerial instruments, upgrading functioning institutions and improving implementation of agreed policies;
  • fine-tuning existing instruments, allied to secondary legislation and new institutions which can add value to European health;
  • amendment of the TEU to provide for a European Health Union, giving the EU concrete competences in health policy while preserving subsidiarity.

In their December meeting, the Council of Health Ministers expressed strong support for the development of an EHU, on a trajectory of the first scenario with elements of the second. This is progress by comparison with the prevalent view of just a year ago, but it is crucial that progress does not stop after constructing these first building-blocks.

The best choice for Europeans would be to adopt the most ambitious, third scenario, providing citizens with the opportunity to reap all the benefits stemming from deeper co-operation in health. Let us amend paragraph 3 of article 3 of the TEU, which begins: ‘The Union shall establish an internal market.’ Let us add: ‘It shall promote universal health coverage by establishing a health union.’

TwitterFacebookLinkedIn
Home ・ Society ・ Our good health: economic fuel or core value?

Filed Under: Society

About Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis, Gediminas Cerniauskas and Birute Tumiene

Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis is the special envoy of the World Health Organization for the European region. He was formerly European commissioner for health and food safety. Gediminas Cerniauskas is a partner and Birute Tumiene a senior expert with the European Institute for Health and Sustainable Development.

Partner Ads

Most Popular Posts

sovereignty Brexit and the misunderstanding of sovereignty Peter Verovšek
globalisation of labour,deglobalisation The first global event in the history of humankind Branko Milanovic
centre-left, Democratic Party The Biden victory and the future of the centre-left EJ Dionne Jr
Covid 19 vaccine Designing vaccines for people, not profits Mariana Mazzucato, Henry Lishi Li and Els Torreele
EU recovery package,Next Generation EU Light in the tunnel or oncoming train? Adam Tooze

Other Social Europe Publications

US election 2020
Corporate taxation in a globalised era
The transformation of work
The coronavirus crisis and the welfare state
Whither Social Rights in (Post-)Brexit Europe?

Social Europe Publishing book

With a pandemic raging, for those countries most affected by Brexit the end of the transition could not come at a worse time. Yet, might the UK's withdrawal be a blessing in disguise? With its biggest veto player gone, might the European Pillar of Social Rights take centre stage? This book brings together leading experts in European politics and policy to examine social citizenship rights across the European continent in the wake of Brexit. Will member states see an enhanced social Europe or a race to the bottom?

'This book correctly emphasises the need to place the future of social rights in Europe front and centre in the post-Brexit debate, to move on from the economistic bias that has obscured our vision of a progressive social Europe.' Michael D Higgins, president of Ireland


MORE INFO

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

Renewing labour relations in the German meat industry: an end to 'organised irresponsibility'?

Over the course of 2020, repeated outbreaks of Covid-19 in a number of large German meat-processing plants led to renewed public concern about the longstanding labour abuses in this industry. New legislation providing for enhanced inspection on health and safety, together with a ban on contract work and limitations on the use of temporary agency employees, holds out the prospect of a profound change in employment practices and labour relations in the meat industry. Changes in the law are not sufficient, on their own, to ensure decent working conditions, however. There is also a need to re-establish the previously high level of collective-bargaining coverage in the industry, underpinned by an industry-wide collective agreement extended by law to cover the entire sector.


FREE DOWNLOAD

ETUI advertisement

ETUI/ETUC (online) conference Towards a new socio-ecological contract 3-5 February 2021

The need to effectively tackle global warming puts under pressure the existing industrial relations models in Europe. A viable world of labour requires a new sustainability paradigm: economic, social and environmental.

The required paradigm shift implies large-scale economic and societal change and serious deliberation. All workers need to be actively involved and nobody should be left behind. Massive societal coalitions will have to be built for a shared vision to emerge and for a just transition, with fairly distributed costs, to be supported. But this is also an opportunity to redefine our societal goals and how they relate to the current focus on (green) growth.

What targets or objectives should be set and how might they be reached? How can we create a sustainable European growth model? How can we reverse the trend towards growing inequalities? What kind of Green New Deal is a realistic and feasible prospect for Europe? What elements of justice, solidarity and equity constitute a fair and sustainable social foundation? What are the roles of the market, the state, industry and civil society? And what role can trade unions play to build a sustainable future that addresses all of these dimensions?


FOR PROGRAMME CLICK HERE

Confirmed speakers include: Ursula von der Leyen, Mariana Mazzucato, Nicolas Schmit, Dominique Meda, Tim Jackson, Juliet Schor, Frans Timmermans and many more.


TO REGISTER CLICK HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Industrial relations: developments 2015-2019

Eurofound has monitored and analysed developments in industrial relations systems at EU level and in EU member states for over 40 years. This new flagship report provides an overview of developments in industrial relations and social dialogue in the years immediately prior to the Covid-19 outbreak. Findings are placed in the context of the key developments in EU policy affecting employment, working conditions and social policy, and linked to the work done by social partners—as well as public authorities—at European and national levels.


CLICK FOR MORE INFO

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

Read FEPS Covid Response Papers

In this moment, more than ever, policy-making requires support and ideas to design further responses that can meet the scale of the problem. FEPS contributes to this reflection with policy ideas, analysis of the different proposals and open reflections with the new FEPS Covid Response Papers series and the FEPS Covid Response Webinars. The latest FEPS Covid Response Paper by the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, 'Recovering from the pandemic: an appraisal of lessons learned', provides an overview of the failures and successes in dealing with Covid-19 and its economic aftermath. Among the authors: Lodewijk Asscher, László Andor, Estrella Durá, Daniela Gabor, Amandine Crespy, Alberto Botta, Francesco Corti, and many more.


CLICK HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Find Social Europe Content

Search Social Europe

Project Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

.EU Web Awards