The European Health Union


 

The COVID-19 pandemic gave impulse to all kind of policy initiatives aimed at the prevention and control of the next outbreak with pandemic potential.

I am thinking for example of the boost given to the 4th European Health Programme 2021-2027 EU4Health (the budget of €5.1bl is more than 10 times the budget of the 3rd Programme), or of the EU launched international treaty to prevent pandemics.

However the most ambitious initiative is the funding of the European Health Union.

The European Commission (EC) proposed the European Health Union in November 2020, with the vision of facing future health crises as a Union, and not as single states.

“we must be sure that all European countries are equally prepared and responsive”

said EC President Ursula von der Leyen.

Central to the European Health Union is strengthening the mandates of ECDC and EMA, and the funding of a new agency: the EU Health Emergency Response Authority (HERA). The keywords here are speed and coordination.

Regarding ECDC, the idea is to approach the issue from two fronts. From the prevention point of view, ECDC will improve its monitoring systems, as well as speed up the risk assessment in order to swiftly inform risk managers. In case an outbreak occurs, and we are now at the response front, ECEC will have an EU Health Task Force already set up: a rapidly mobilised team that could be deployed to Member States and third countries.

EMA, on the other hand, will have a major role in monitoring and mitigating shortage of medicines and medical devices to avoid future crises and to rapidly respond once a crisis is declared. It will also have a more central role in clinical trials and vaccine research.

As mentioned, the European Health Union includes also setting up a new authority: HERA.

Well first let me pull a thorn from my side. I personally find the choice of name amusing, as in the eyes of the EC, Hera, the jealous wife of Zeus normally quite vengeful against the husband’s lovers, is supposed to protect Europa, Zeus own lover. In nomen omen? I hope not.


 Press conference by Commissioner Stella Kyriakides on the European Health Union. Credit: European Commission

Once we got this out of the way, let us go back to the technical issues. According to Commissioner Stella Kyriakides

“[HERA] can be a game changing initiative for our strategic preparedness, our ability to anticipate threats and to strengthen our common response in the EU”

The new authority will have a major role in preparedness, thanks to its horizon scanning activity, as well as its access to medicines and medical equipment (it will, for example, have the authority of negotiating the purchase of vaccines). While this could look like a partial overlap of mandates with ECDC and EMA, HERA will have the possibility to rapidly deploy the medicines and medical equipment “by covering the whole value chain from conception to distribution and use” (COM/2020/724).

To achieve all this one needs high quality data, which will be delivered by the newly funded Health Data Space, where data will be findable and, most importantly, interoperable.

The legal package concerning the foundation of the European Health Union includes the following documents:

To nicely set up this ambitious plan, the European Health Union will have access to the budget of, for example, EU4Health and Horizon Europe.

Although the legislative process is ongoing (to check at which point we are as of April 2021, take a look at this briefing by the European Parliament Think Tank), a HERA incubator already started, with the aim to tackle coronavirus variants (check my blog article of March 2021).

It has to be noted that the European Health Union considers also threats resulting from AMR, pressure on biodiversity and climate change. Now while this does sound suspiciously like a One Health approach, the term One Health is mentioned only once in the Communication and once in the Proposal on cross-border threats. Indeed EC President von der Leyen while talking about the European Health Union said

“The health of our planet and the health of human beings are linked, we know it by now. So we call it a ‘one health' approach”

Apparently One Health will be central to the European Health Union. So why does it not have a more prominent role in the Communication or in the Proposal? Could we expect in the near future a European One Health Union?

I surely hope so!