Post-crisis Health Policy: Dismantling at the EU Level?

In the aftermath of the economic crisis, the trajectory of European Union (EU) health policy has been fundamentally altered. Whilst those areas prioritised by President Juncker – mostly involving data collection, performance assessment and digital health – have progressed strongly, the EU’s traditional public health activities have experienced relative decline. Moreover, administrative reforms and increased central control of the health agenda have coincided with a cessation of health policy initiatives and legislation. This paper uses the concept of policy dismantling to explore how, why and in which policy areas EU health activity is being slowed, stopped and/or reversed. It identifies both active and passive strategies of dismantling, assesses the European Commission’s objectives when dismantling health policies and asks why some issue areas are more likely to experience dismantling than others. Based on interviews with a number of Brussels-based health actors, it finds that the relationship between dismantling decisions and the reduction of policy activity is complex, with the former not always leading to the latter, and that health policy’s reliance on a combination of soft law and regulatory instruments has a significant impact on the nature of dismantling.