For want of a champion: why the EU won’t be ready for the next public health crisis

ABSTRACT

This article argues that the EU response to the COVID-19 crisis follows a pattern much like its response to earlier public health threats. Though each time the EU commits to being prepared for the next cross-border threat to health, as the immediate crisis recedes, so does the momentum to build the necessary administrative capacity, leaving the EU unprepared to take a leadership role when the next public health crisis emerges. The literature on administrative capacity, identifies authority, autonomy, and resources as three crucial dimensions of administrative capacity. An examination of the efforts to build administrative capacity after several recent public health crises (SARS, Avian Flu, MERS and COVID-19) shows that the EU has made only modest progress in granting such capacity to its supranational agency, The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). Despite the claims that COVID-19 was a new level of public health threat that demanded supranational action, the EU response again seems to fall back into a familiar pattern of making minor adjustments.

KEYWORDS:

• EU health
• ECDC
• COVID-19
• administrative capacity

Acknowledgements

The authors with to thank Tommaso Pavone, Holly Jarman and Sarah Rozenblum as well as three reviewers for this journal, who provided helpful comments on an earlier version of this article. Normal disclaimers apply.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The reform of the ECDC is part of a much larger package on strengthening European preparedness to address cross-border health threats. See, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legalcontent/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52020DC0724&qid=1605690513438.

2 European COVID-19 surveillance network (ECOVID-Net). https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/about-us/who-we-work/disease-and-laboratory-networks/european-COVID-19-surveillance-network-eCOVID.