Solidarity and trust in European Union health governance: three ways forward.

Trust and solidarity are centrally important to the functioning of healthcare systems, and for societal resilience and stability more broadly. The European Union is increasingly shaping governance and norms that affect trust and solidarity in health-a process that has intensified with the announcement of the 'European Health Union' in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this context, how can the EU ensure solidarity in health while generating public trust as a pre-condition for solidaristic institutions? We propose three strategies to reach this goal.

The path to a European Health Union.

The European Union has historically left health policy decisions to individual member states, cooperating only on issues like cross-border healthcare and medicine safety. However, the COVID-19 pandemic underscored the need for collective action across borders. In response, in October 2020, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called for the creation of a "European Health Union".

Impact of the European Union on access to medicines in low- and middle-income countries: A scoping review.

This Scoping Review synthesises evidence of the impacts of European Union (EU) law, regulation, and policy on access to medicines in in non-EU low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), and the mechanisms and nature of those impacts. We searched eight scholarly databases and grey literature published between 1995-2021 in four languages. The EU exerts global influence on pharmaceuticals in LMICs in three ways: explicit agreements between EU-LMICs (ex.

Public support for European cooperation in the procurement, stockpiling and distribution of medicines.

Background: The COVID-19 outbreak has heightened ongoing political debate about the international joint procurement of medicines and medical countermeasures. The European Union (EU) has developed what remains largely contractual and decentralized international procurement cooperation. The corona crisis has broadened and deepened public debate on such cooperation, in particular on the scope of cooperation, solidarity in the allocation of such cooperation, and delegation of cooperative decision-making.

Towards more comprehensive health law and policy research.

In this comment, and drawing on the papers in the special issue, we ask: what are the core questions for the future of research into health law and policy, and European health law and policy more specifically? We first sketch the general functions and values of health law and policy. We then outline how these functions and values are affected by globalisation and Europeanisation, on the one hand, and technological change and digitalisation, on the other. In light of these developments we carve out some questions for future research and the implications of this agenda for the academic community that is working on European health law and policy.