Policy Learning and EU Public Health Policy

Regarding the European Union (EU) 's public health, crises are often considered major drivers of change through learning. With the EU having experienced three major health crises over the last 20 years, it is endowed with a diversity of instruments to respond to health threats. However, policy instruments for the prevention of non-salient threats, such as obesity, also abound in spite of the absence an event framed as a crisis. This paper asks: under what condition does the EU select new public health policy instruments? The literature on the EU’s health policy is prolix on the role played by crises which induce fast-paced learning in which new instruments are framed as "necessity" due to a high problem pressure. This framing is necessary to convince EU member States, which are traditionally reluctant to let the EU encroach on their public health prerogatives. The claim defended in this paper is that the EU develops new policy instruments for its public health policy following epistemic learning. Epistemic learning may either follow the emergence of a health threat often framed as a crisis) or the diffusion of new policy goals in the global epistemic community. Yet it differs from learning induced by negotiation and hierarchical pressures as it aims at creating and adapting public policies in a precautionary rather than a reactionary manner. Drawing on process tracing, the article compares the EU’s response to the last three major crises (SARS, H1N1 and COVID-19) as well as the development of the EU’s top four priorities in prevention (AMR, Tobacco, Nutrition and physical activity and Alcohol). This paper shows that epistemic learning is necessary to the development of new policy instruments and the EU’s public health policy is less dependent on sudden epidemiological events as previously found.