The European Union has historically left health policy decisions to individual member states, cooperating only on issues like cross-border healthcare and medicine safety. However, the COVID-19 ...pandemic underscored the need for collective action across borders. In response, in October 2020, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called for the creation of a "European Health Union". This initiative aims to enhance the protection of European citizens' health, bolster pandemic preparedness, and strengthen healthcare systems. So far, the initiative has not led to major contestation. This might be because the proposals under this heading have been rather piecemeal and are not generally seen as being part of a comprehensive vision for identifying areas where EU intervention benefit national health policy. In this contribution we propose a path forward in terms of content and process for developing a more comprehensive vision on the policy content and the process. In so doing, we are not debating the need for a European Health Union. We take for granted that the existing European Health Union presents an opportunity to deliver, now and in the future, the added benefit of harmonizing, centralizing, or coordinating health-related laws, institutions, policies and actions at EU level.
The present contribution aims to provide an overview of the role attributed to digitalization in relation to the EU Farm to Fork Strategy. The Strategy represents the set of instruments that the ...European Commission identified to achieve a European Union sustainable food system, and the role attributed to digitalization is pivotal, as the main overall instrument to boost sustainability. Based on the existing literature on the specific subject matter, the authors attempt to provide an analysis of the document looking for specific references to digitalization and highlighting possible emerging related ethical issues with the aim of initiating the discourse for further research on possible legal solutions.
Focusing on gas, this article explores the role of the European Commission in the process of European Union energy security policy development, and the extent to which the policy area is becoming ...increasingly supranational. Situating the article within the literature on agenda-setting and framing, it is argued that a policy window was opened as a result of: enlargement to include more energy import dependent states, a trend of increasing energy imports and prices, and gas supply disruptions. From the mid-2000s, the Commission contributed to a shift in political norms, successfully framing import dependency as a problem requiring an EU-level solution, based on the institution’s pre-existing preferences for a diversified energy supply and internal energy market. Whilst Member States retain significant sovereignty, the Commission has achieved since 2006 creeping competencies in the internal, and to a lesser extent external, dimensions of EU energy policy.
► We examine the development of EU energy security policy, focusing on gas. ► We examine changes in European Commission competence in energy policy. ► The European Commission has gained increased competence in the internal market. ► In the external dimension of EU energy policy Member States retain competence. ► The European Commission has had qualified success as a policy entrepreneur.
In this book the author examines the compliance of the European anti-cartel enforcement procedure with the presumption of innocence under Article 6(2) of the European Convention on Human Rights.
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