No abstract

When disease becomes a threat to security, the balance between the need to fight the disease and obligation to protect the rights of individuals often changes. The COVID-19 crisis shows that the need for surveillance poses challenges to the right of privacy. We focus on the European Union (EU), which has a strong data protection regime yet requires its member states to exchange personal data gathered through contact tracing. While public authorities may limit the right to privacy in case of public health threats, the EU provides little guidance when such limitations are proportionate. To define standards, we analyze existing EU case law regarding national security measures. We conclude that on the proportionality of contact tracing in the EU it is difficult to reconcile public health measures and individual rights, but guidance can be taken from understandings of proportionality in the context of security, particularly in the current COVID-19 emergency.

No abstract

No abstract

The threat posed by 2019-nCoV and the fragmentation of existing health protection systems caused by Brexit call for urgent assessment of cross Europe cooperation, say Mark Flear, Anniek de Ruijter, and Martin McKee

The European Union is increasingly moving toward an integrated policy approach, which also acknowledges linkages between public health and (external) security policy. This introduction to the Special Issue sets out a research agenda on the emerging health-security nexus. It analyses recent policy developments with respect to the public health and security, and discusses interactions along the health-security nexus in the context of the European Union. It suggests drivers behind the integrated approach and it critically examines the health-security nexus from the perspective of effectiveness and legitimacy.

The COVID-19 outbreak in Europe has brought attention to EU health policy as a focal point for solidarity, particularly as it concerns access to medicines. Against the backdrop of policy proposals for EU joint procurement of medicines, this article expands our understanding of public opinion towards this particular aspect of European integration. Drawing on data from a conjoint experiment in five EU countries, the study investigates the extent to which citizens' preferences concerning alternative policy designs for EU joint procurement of medicines are either structured along a pro-EU versus anti-EU or ideological divide, or are crisis driven by the perceived COVID-19 threat. The analysis reveals that individual preferences over the design of EU risk pooling for medicines are most strongly explained by Euroscepticism, while egalitarian ideology plays only a modest role. How citizens' perceived threat of COVID-19 affects their preferences for this form of EU risk pooling is dependent on the national context.

Taking into consideration the central health provision in the Treaty, which outlines that health is to be ‘mainstreamed’ in all other EU policies, it could be inferred that EU public health and health-care policy and law is either non-existent as an autonomous policy area, or that it is basically everything, in that all EU public policy is also health policy. This puzzle forms the starting point for this chapter, which describes the nature of EU power in the field of human health currently. The chapter first, as an initial exploration, questions the existence of a European authoritative concept of ‘health’. Second, the chapter takes into consideration the nature of EU policymaking in general and regarding health in particular and develops a concept of EU health law and policy, distinguishing between EU public health and EU health-care law and policy. Last, to draw out the scope of EU health policy more specifically, a historical overview is given of the involvement of the EU in health. The chapter conceptualizes EU power in the field of human health as authoritative allocations of value through the European Union political system with the object of protecting and promoting human health. This conceptualization draws out the scope of policy that will be the central focus for the following chapters.