Five Years after the COVID-19 Pandemic: What has the EU learned?
By Anna-Magdalena Glockzin, 3 minutes.
Do you remember the last time you wore a mask to protect yourself and your loved ones from an unknown virus? The rapid test before meeting your grandparents? The wait for access to a vaccine? These issues feel like they are from a different time. Today, current debates and concerns deal among many with Russia’s war against Ukraine, Trump’s unpredictable and ruthless politics, and the volatility of the world economy. Nonetheless, the COVID-19 pandemic made one thing very clear: a worldwide health crisis poses severe challenges and risks to our societies. The previous article on the COVID-19 pandemic aftermath discussed to what extent we are still affected today by the consequences of the pandemic. This blog post takes a closer look at the European Union (EU)’s preparedness for future health crises, finally asking whether the EU could deal with another future pandemic.
What is the EU doing?
The European Commission launched the EU4Health projects, a programme for a healthier European Union, adopted as a response to the pandemic running from 2021 until 2027. With a budget of €4.4 bn, the EU is committed to building a resilient European Health Union, focusing on improving and fostering health, protecting people, ensuring access to medicinal products and devices, and strengthening national health systems. The European Union also launched the PROACT EU-Response project. This initiative aims to improve the EU's readiness to counter future health crises and pandemics by creating a European research and preparedness network. The European Patients Forum (EPF), the leading patient advocacy organisation in Europe, is also part of this project and at the annual Congress of the EPF, the organisation announced that it will address European health care’s resilience together with stakeholders. Yet, it likewise expressed “strong concerns” about the lack of information on the EU4Health work programme 2025, highlighting that civil society organisations will now have less time to implement their activities.
Pictures from Pixabay.
Where are the health aspects absent?
When taking a look at the European Commission, its recent work programme focused very much on “competition”, which is incompatible with strengthening health care systems, as they should not be considered as competitive industries. Also, the Niinistö report called Safer Together – Strengthening Europe’s Civilian and Military Preparedness and Readiness barely mentions health as a field of action, revealing how the preparedness of health care systems lost priority. Resilient health care systems are not only crucial in health crises like a pandemic but also in times of war and conflict, which is why it is surprising that the robustness of health care is not a topic. Hybrid security threats can endanger the care of patients since many processes are digitised and military conflict requires medical care of injured persons as well.
Moreover, climate disasters are also a test for the resilience of health care provision, as floods or earthquakes often cause a high number of casualties in need of complex medical care. Apart from that, the health risks resulting from the climate crisis also need to be addressed. Additionally, it is important to guard access to health care from politicisation. During the pandemic, far-right leaders and conspiracy theorists exploited the insecurity and uncertainty of the crisis, spreading fake news and conspiracy theories, thereby exacerbating the situation. All of these considerations seem not to be taken into account in the new policy documents on the EU’s general resilience and crisis preparedness.
Still room for improvement
In sum, there are projects and endeavours underway to better prepare the EU and its Member States for future health crises but the priorities lie with security, defence and geopolitics at the moment, which is also rooted in the current tense geopolitical situation. Yet, the EU is commonly criticized for being reactive rather than proactive. Although issues of defence and military security seem to be more urgent than future health crises or the resilience of our healthcare systems, these matters are interconnected. Health care is crucial in the context of all crises the EU faces, and a new pandemic could potentially hit the world in the coming decades. Therefore, by looking at security and geopolitical challenges one-dimensionally, it risks neglecting the serious threats a new (health) crisis could pose to the European population and the world as a hole.
