Towards a synergistic global health strategy in the EU

Note given the global outbreak of COVID-19This working paper was written before the outbreak of COVID-19 reached a level of a pandemic.The outbreak as well as the responses of Member States and the EU are likely to have a profound effect on the debate around the EU's role in global health.Nevertheless, our research and recommendations are rooted in an analysis of long-term developments in the EU which rather gain in relevance with the crisis than losing their validity.Most importantly, the outbreak of COVID-19 emphasises the need for a coordinated European approach to global health across sectors.The need for a synergistic strategy for global health -embracing different policy fields and a large set of actors -has become even more evident in the face of a pandemic: Right now, the attention of policy makers needs to be on health systems and their capacities as well as stabilizing their economies.But how the EU will act in policy fields such as global health diplomacy, development assistance, food safety, and particularly digital/data governance will soon need to be addressed with determination. 22.03.2019, IK/CFa Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy could if ingested by humans lead to the fatal neurodegenerative variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.WHO took a stronger role in producing global public goods by strengthening its role as a norm-setter (e.g. total revision of the International Health Regulations, adoption of the Framework Convention of Tobacco Control and the Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health).Meanwhile, several events in Europe and globally had led to a stronger role of the EU in health policy.In fact, it can be argued that a genuine EU health policy arena emerged only with concerns over the discovery of BSE-contaminated beef a in the United Kingdom in 1996. 4In 1999, under the Prodi Commission, the Directorate-General for Public Health and Consumers (called DG SANCO at the time) was created and four years later the first EU Health Programme was launched.One of the Health Programme's priorities -"to enhance the capability of responding rapidly and in a coordinated fashion to threats to health"responded directly to another health concern on a global level: health security.While having no substantial impact on health in the EU, the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2002 had made cross-border health threats an important political topic.Over the next years two more epidemics (2005: H5N1 'avian flu', 2009: H1N1 'swine flu) led to a sustained attention for the topic.The European Union reacted to those threats -and a global political momentum towards more health security -with the creation of several new institutions and policies. 5Most notably, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) started in 2005 as an independent EU agency with the aim to strengthen Europe's defence against infectious disease.Other institutional changes included the EU Health Security Committee (HSC), established in 2001, and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), established in 2002.