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Q3) Which theory or theories are more successful in explaining the development of EU health law and policy?
See section 28.2
- The beginnings of EU health policy can be traced back to the first disease programmes for steel and mineworkers in the context of the Coal and Steel Communities. As the communities expanded to other ‘markets’, new EU health provisions were needed to support these regimes.
- The creation of common agricultural markets, for example, required cooperation on food safety protections, as made clear and accelerated by the outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, also known as ‘mad cow disease’) in the 1990s.
- It is for this reason that the development of EU health policy can be understood using the theory of neofunctionalism. Neofunctionalism describes a dynamic whereby the need for regulation in one area creates pressure for regulation in functionally related areas, resulting in ‘spillover’, with the potential to create EU policy even when the governments of the member states do not necessarily want or plan for it.
- The EU’s regulation of how tobacco products are manufactured and sold on the internal market, for instance, has led to common rules on tobacco advertising, warning labels, and ingredients, all of which shape health; the integration of agricultural markets led to demand for an integrated food safety regime after the vCJD ("mad cow") crisis showed the divergence of regulatory systems.
These and countless other examples illustrate the crucial role of neofunctional spillover as a driver of the EU’s growing role in health.