The development of EU health policy and the Covid-19 pandemic: trends and implications

Abstract

EU health policy is a policy forged in crisis. Whilst maintaining the strict limitations on the EU’s role that are described in the treaties, crises have historically been followed by incremental but integrative policy change. Given this trend, should we be expecting a radical expansion of EU health policy in the aftermath of Covid-19? And, if so, what parameters and characteristics might this new agenda have? As we enter the period in which the EU will try to elaborate its new health policy, this paper uses a Complexity perspective to assess how the emerging agenda compares to existing and historical EU action on health, the kind of decision-making that we are likely to see in the different areas of action, and the limitations of EU health policy development as it pushes into more political and complex areas of policy.