2023-09-03 20:19:08
After the environment, will Europe build a health policy? Since the Covid epidemic, the question has arisen. Because past the first difficulties (lack of vaccine, departure of Moderna), the EU has demonstrated, in obtaining and distributing vaccines, an added value in relation to health policies.
In any case, the Commission and the European Parliament want to move forward. The latter will publish a report on non-communicable diseases in the fall. For the record, the OECD had estimated at 200,000 the number of deaths that might be avoided in Europe and at a lower cost for public finances of the order of 80 to 125 billion euros (unnecessary hospitalizations etc.) if an effort was devoted to the therapeutic adherence of patients with chronic diseases (arterial hypertension, diabetes, etc.).
The interest of this report, which is added to that relating to resistance to antibiotics and to that on mental health, is above all political because carried by the health committee of the Parliament. However, this committee, in accordance with the wish of the EPP, the first parliamentary group, is intended to become a full committee in the next legislature. If we put the issue of health into perspective, the parallels with the environment are illuminating.
From a legal point of view, no more than the Green Deal, common thread of the Commission since 2019, a strong European action in health is not obvious. Because health, like the environment, is a competence shared between the Member States and the EU, and not a federal competence like trade or competition. A strong political will will therefore be essential to give the EU an important role.
The parallel between health and the environment does not stop there. At least two common features should be emphasised, particularly clear in the case of non-communicable diseases, the subject of Parliament’s next report.
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The first is the importance of individual behaviors. In the energy field, beyond a massive normative effort – to the point that some are calling for a break – nothing solid will be done without the support of the populations. In health too, Montesquieu’s maxim “mores make better citizens than laws” applies. Indeed, many medical treatments do not produce the expected effects because their recipients, particularly the young and the elderly, simply do not follow their treatments.
The second is the importance of innovation. This is the case in the energy field, where each type of energy (nuclear, wind, solar, etc.) will have to make an onslaught of innovation. This is also the case in the field of health. Let us think here of data processing, a subject on which the EU intends to make progress. If we think, on the laboratory side, of the ability to innovate, whether in the use of digital technology to monitor the correct intake of medication, or in the creation of “all-in-one” drugs (fixed dose combinations ), which the WHO has just added to its list of essential medicines.
Like many areas, health will remain an essentially national competence. European action will be complementary. Nor will it necessarily be decided at EU level. Because the successful experiences of such and such a Member State – let us think of the lead of Belgium, Germany or the Netherlands in terms of therapeutic education – might influence the others.
*Author of Reform or insignificance: 10 years to save the European Union (Éd. Ecole de Guerre)
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