scholarly journals Workshop: Everything you always wanted to know about EU health policy but were afraid to ask

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (Supplement_4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
European Union ◽  
Health Policy ◽  
Health System ◽  
Health Systems ◽  
Determinants Of Health ◽  
Health In All Policies ◽  
Border Regions ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
The Eu

Abstract Objective The EU is often criticized for being ‘market-driven’ and practicing a form of ‘cold integration’. Any attempt, however, to strengthen solidarity and social integration in the EU is met by stakeholders in the member states with reservation and often outright refusal, arguing that health systems are national competence subject to the subsidiary principle. This conundrum of asking for more but allowing for less has blocked a scientifically informed public debate about the EU and health policy. The overall objective of this workshop is to discuss how health research can contribute to resolve this conundrum making the EU more conducive to the needs of health systems, public health (PH) and Health in All Policies (HiAP). To this end we will review the following 4 specific topics What are is EU-health policy and what other policies are affecting health and health systems?What tells us the projected Brexit-impact on the UK health system and PH about the value of EU health policy?Are EU-trade policies shaping healthier commercial determinants of health?What is the added value of cross-border care at and beyond border regions? This workshop is based on the update of the seminal volume “Everything you always wanted to know about European Union health policies but were afraid to ask” (2019, 2nd edition). Key note Scott Greer: In health and health systems the European Union is ubiquitous. Health systems in Europe are hard to figure without the cross border mobility of health professions. Patients going cross-borders. We have a European Medicines Agency that is regulating key aspects of the pharmaceutical market. Health systems have become part of the economic governance of the EU. In PH we have the ECDC, a PH programme and policies on health related consumer protection and may mechanism that should protect European citizens from scourges that know no borders. With health in all policies, the EU legislates literally on all known agents and, when in doubt, is using the pre-cautionary principle to protect citizens from health hazards. All this is supported by a large EU research programme. Panellist 1 N Fahy, the projected impact of Brexit on health system functions of the United Kingdom demonstrates how deep the integration goes and how beneficial it is for both health systems and public health. Panellist 2 H Jarman: The discussion around the Transatlantic Trade an Investment Partnership (TTIP) have risen worries about privatization of health services and lowering of food standards. But TTIP is only the tip of the Iceberg given that the EU has several types of trade agreements with many countries and groups of countries, shaping the commercial determinants of health. Panellist 3 W Palm: Cross-border collaboration is already taking place in many border regions. The European reference networks demonstrate the value of the cross-border collaboration beyond border regions, as does collaboration for joint purchasing and health workforce development. Key messages Health is important at the EU level and the EU level is important for health. Not shaping health and health systems at EU level will limit the perspectives of EU integration, health system development public health and HiAP. Panelists Scott Greer Holly Jarman Contact: [email protected] Nick Fahy Contact: [email protected] Willy Palm Contact: [email protected] Contact: [email protected]

scholarly journals 29.F. Workshop: The Health Systems and Policy Monitor network: reforms and health system changes in the spotlight

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Health Policy ◽  
Knowledge Transfer ◽  
Health System ◽  
Health Systems ◽  
Comparative Research ◽  
World Health ◽  
State Of Health ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Cross Country ◽  
The Eu

Abstract The European Observatory established the Health Systems and Policy Monitor (HSPM) network in 2008, bringing together an international group of high-profile institutions from Europe and beyond with high academic standing in health systems and policy analysis. An important step was taken in 2011, when the Bertelsmann Health Policy Monitor, a 20-country-project with already significant overlap with the current HSPM network, merged with the Observatory's network of national lead institutions. Today, the network includes 40 institutions from 31 countries, with members participating in a wide range of activities and collaborations, such as writing the Observatory's flagship health system reports (HiTs), keeping the health policy community up-to-date on health system developments via the HSPM web platform, and contributing their expertise to reports, studies and knowledge transfer exercises co-ordinated by the Observatory for a variety of audiences, including ministries of health and international organisations such as the World Health Organization and the European Commission. In addition, network members participate in an annual meeting, hosted in a different member country every year, coming together over two days to exchange knowledge and experiences about the various health system reforms happening in their countries. The aim of these meetings is to present, discuss and start comparative research collaborations of the members that can inform policymaking. As part of a collaboration with the journal Health Policy, researchers of the HSPM network have published more than 100 articles on cross-country comparisons of policies or on ongoing nation health reforms in a special section - the Health Reform Monitor - of the journal. This workshop aims to provide the audience with an overview of the network and its expanding range of activities. An introductory presentation will briefly introduce the origins of the network and discuss its current line of work. The second presentation will provide an overview of reform trends that are routinely collected during the annual meetings as part of the “reform roundup”. The third presentation will give an example of how the network has contributed to the European Commission's State of Health in the EU initiative, by performing a 'rapid response” that informed the companion report to the State of Health in the EU country health profiles 2019. The fourth presentation is a typical example of the kind of collaborative work that the network is undertaking, i.e. involving multiple countries on a topic of shared interest. The workshop will conclude with a debate with the audience about the conceptual and methodological challenges as well as opportunities and future directions of cross-country comparative research and the HSPM network in particular. Key messages The Health Systems and Policy Monitor Network provides detailed descriptions of health systems and provides up to date information on reforms and changes that are particularly policy relevant. The Health Systems and Policy Monitor Network increasingly engages in comparative health systems research and knowledge transfer activities.

Querying Cosmopolis at the Borders of Europe

2007 ◽  
Vol 39 (7) ◽  
pp. 1582-1600 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivier Thomas Kramsch
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Frantz Fanon ◽  
The Political ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Border Regions ◽  
Conceptual Frame ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Globalizing World ◽  
Boundary Disputes ◽  
The Eu

Notions of immanence provide the implicit theoretical grammar for much work exploring the political terrain of an active transnational or radically cosmopolitan society in our day. In this paper I attempt to problematize such a gesture in the recent ‘turn to cosmopolis’, arguing that its conceptual frame fails to specify adequately the geohistorical preconditions for a politics capable of mediating between nationalizing and cosmopolitanizing tendencies at work in a globalizing world. For the case of Europe, I argue such a legacy may be more productively located in the ‘border work’ of mid-20th-century anti-imperialism and decolonization, whose struggles to redefine the postcolonial couplet of ‘nation’ and ‘state’ haunt current attempts by the European Union to craft a more inclusive and cosmopolitan transboundary future. I explore how such governmentalizing phantasms specifically inform attempts to create viable cross-border regions ( euregios) within the EU, and continue to gnaw at attempts to negotiate boundary disputes at the outer limits of the continent. In conclusion, a cautious rite of exorcism is ventured by engaging with the elusive anti-imperial cosmopolitanism of Frantz Fanon.

scholarly journals Covid-19 Using Border Controls to Fight a Pandemic? Reflections From the European Union

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elspeth Guild
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
European Union ◽  
Eu Law ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The Public ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Article 9 ◽  
Border Controls ◽  
The Eu

When Covid-19 was acknowledged to have arrived in Europe in February-March 2020, politicians and public health authorities scrabbled to find appropriate and effective responses to the challenges. The EU obligation contained in Article 9 Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) requiring the EU (including the Member States to achieve a common protection on human health, however, seems to have been missing from the responses.) Instead, borders and their control became a site of substantial political debate across Europe as a possible venue for effective measures to limit the spread of the pandemic. While the most invasive Covid-19 measures have been within EU states, lockdown, closure of businesses etc., the cross-border aspects (limitations on cross border movement) have been important. In the European Union this had important consequences for EU law on border controls, in particular free movement of persons and the absence of controls among Schengen states. It also implicated border controls with third countries, including European Free Trade Area (EFTA and Switzerland) all states neighboring the EU, the UK (having left the EU on 1 January 2020) the Western Balkans and Turkey. While EU law distinguishes between Schengen borders where no control takes place on persons, non-Schengen EU borders, where controls take place but are limited to identity checks and border controls with third countries and external borders with third countries (non-EFTA or Swiss) the responses of many Member States and the EU institutions abandoned many aspects of these distinctions. Indeed, the difference between border controls between states (inside Schengen, the EU, EFTA, or outside) and internal restrictions on movement became increasingly blurred. Two approaches—public health and public policy—were applied simultaneously and not always in ways which were mutually coherent, or in any way consistent with the Article 9 TFEU commitment. While the public health approach to movement of persons is based on ensuring identification of those in need of treatment or possibly carrying the disease, providing treatment as quickly as possible or quarantine, the public policy approach is based on refusing entry to persons who are a risk irrespective of what that may mean in terms of propagating the pandemic in neighboring states or states of origin. I will examine here the ways in which the two approaches were applied in the EU from the perspective of EU law on border controls.

scholarly journals An Assessment of Coherence Between Early Warning and Response Systems and Serious Cross-Border Health Threats in the European Union and Turkey

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 883-892 ◽  
Author(s):  
Perihan Elif Ekmekci
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
European Union ◽  
Early Warning ◽  
World Health ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Response Planning ◽  
Health Threats ◽  
Response Systems ◽  
The Eu

AbstractDisease outbreaks have attracted the attention of the public health community to early warning and response systems (EWRS) for communicable diseases and other cross-border threats to health. The European Union (EU) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have published regulations in this area. Decision 1082/2013/EU brought a new approach the management of public health threats in EU member states. Decision 1082/2013/EU brought several innovations, which included establishing a Health Security Committee; preparedness and response planning; joint procurement of medical countermeasures; ad hoc monitoring for biological, chemical, and environmental threats; EWRS; and recognition of an emergency situation and interoperability between various sectors. Turkey, as an acceding country to the EU and a member of the WHO, has been improving its national public health system to meet EU legislations and WHO standards. This article first explains EWRS as defined in Decision 1082/2013/EU and Turkey’s obligations to align its public health laws to the EU acquis. EWRS in Turkey are addressed, particularly their coherence with EU policies regarding preparedness and response, alert notification, and interoperability between health and other sectors. Finally, the challenges and limitations of the current Turkish system are discussed and further improvements are suggested. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2016;10:883–892)

scholarly journals Harmful Commercial Marketing and Children’s Rights: For a Better Use of EU Powers

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 841-850
Author(s):  
Amandine GARDE
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
European Union ◽  
Children's Rights ◽  
Children’S Rights ◽  
Unhealthy Food ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Tobacco Products ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
The Eu

The marketing of tobacco, alcohol, unhealthy food and gambling services is harmful to public health, the European economy and sustainability. If the European Union (EU) has embraced the regulation of cross-border marketing for tobacco products for over two decades, it has consistently resisted evidence-driven calls to regulate the marketing of other harmful commodities, preferring instead to rely on ineffective industry pledges. This contribution reflects on why the EU has failed to use its competence to regulate cross-border marketing more systematically to protect health and highlights why the time is ripe to reconsider the issue, before concluding with a possible way forward.

scholarly journals Investigating Health Systems in the European Union: Outcomes and Fiscal Sustainability

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 3186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madalina Popescu ◽  
Eva Militaru ◽  
Amalia Cristescu ◽  
Maria Vasilescu ◽  
Monica Maer Matei
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Health System ◽  
Health Systems ◽  
Composite Index ◽  
Healthcare Systems ◽  
Fiscal Sustainability ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Eu Countries ◽  
Health Performance ◽  
The Eu

Healthcare systems aim to provide access to good quality care, while ensuring equity and solidarity. The fiscal sustainability of healthcare systems has become a matter of concern in recent European Union (EU) debates, considering the ever increasing need for adequate healthcare determined by factors such as aging population, investments in technology and infrastructure, medical products and wages. Our paper seeks to measure the health system performances of the EU countries by building up a composite index, which will then be used as a tool in investigating the relationship between health performance and the fiscal sustainability of health systems. A principal components analysis (PCA) was applied to build the composite index through the use of the most relevant health indicators provided by Eurostat and the Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform. The composite index offers a comprehensive performance assessment and provides a clear ranking of the EU countries based on their health system performances. Further investigation of the link between health performance and fiscal sustainability revealed that higher ranks are associated with higher shares of health expenditures in gross domestic product (GDP), a large share of employment in the health sector, and higher duration of working life. These patterns are followed by efficient health systems, encountering reduced sustainability risks.

Emancipating Health from the Internal Market: For a Stronger EU (Legislative) Competence in Public Health

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 747-756
Author(s):  
Vincent DELHOMME
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
European Union ◽  
Health Policy ◽  
General Public ◽  
Internal Market ◽  
Health Law ◽  
Relative Lack ◽  
Health Measures ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
The Eu

It is a striking feature of European Union (EU) health law and policy that it has developed in a relative lack of awareness from the general public. This situation can be partly explained by the existence of only a limited competence in the field and the recourse to other legal bases to enact public health measures, particularly Article 114 TFEU. The use of internal market powers to conduct EU health policy has given rise to several problems, affecting the legitimacy of EU action and its capacity to adequately protect human health. Only a Treaty change can provide the EU with the clear competence and the solid legislative powers that it needs to tackle the various health challenges that Europe faces and will continue to face.

scholarly journals European response to COVID-19 health crisis

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 123
Author(s):  
George Nastos
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Health Systems ◽  
Political System ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
The World ◽  
The Eu

The world is undergoing the pandemic health crisis of COVID-19. First and foremost, the pandemic is causing losses in human lives all over the world. Secondly, it is testing the economies of all countries, regardless of the degree of dispersion and loss of lives between the states. Another consequence of this health crisis is that apart from national health systems, it also puts to the test political systems. This consequence is even greater for an evolving political system such as the European Union, which in a decade has faced two other crises - the Eurozone and the refugee crisis. The EU has once again been called upon to face an exogenous cross-border crisis. It has to confront a pandemic within the existing framework of its competence, tools and bodies, while creating new ones in the need to support its Member States. This paper focuses on the European Union's response to the management of the COVID-19 pandemic, the weaknesses that this crisis has brought to the fore and the policies that would help the EU manage similar crises in the future.

EU COVID-19 Certificates: A Critical Analysis

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Iris GOLDNER LANG
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
European Union ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Eu Law ◽  
Member States ◽  
The Third ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Green Certificates ◽  
The Eu ◽  
Cross Border Movement

On 17 March 2021, the European Commission put forward its Proposal for a Regulation on Digital Green Certificates, which would facilitate European Union (EU) cross-border movement during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Regulation on the EU Digital COVID Certificate was adopted on 14 June 2021 and it will start to apply from 1 July 2021. This article examines the main declared goals of the new Regulation – the first being that Digital COVID Certificates facilitate safe cross-border movement, the second being that they preclude more restrictive national measures, the third being that they prevent discrimination and the fourth being that they coordinate Member States’ actions. In so doing, it highlights the main benefits and weaknesses of the Regulation, but it also goes beyond the Regulation by tackling broader questions of EU law that will be of relevance even once the pandemic is over. In this respect, the paper highlights the importance of science in assessing the proportionality of pandemic-related measures and of choosing the least restrictive and the most individualised options when restricting free movement due to public health reasons. It also identifies the effects EU certificates will have on Member States’ regulation of national COVID-19 certificates, notably those designed for other purposes than cross-border travel, and it shows that there is a thin line between the EU’s and national competences in this area.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document