The European Union's "One Health" Commitment: A Gap between Rhetoric and Action?

The debate around the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic underscored the relevance of the human-animal-environmental interface, encapsulated by the "One Health" approach. In its 2022 Global Health Strategy, the European Union (EU) reaffirmed its commitment to this holistic perspective, which should allow its health policy to leverage synergies with other, more consolidated policies (such as environment, climate change and agriculture). However, the extent to which the EU's governance structure has internalized and promoted "One Health" in practice deserves further attention. From an organizational standpoint, EU institutions handle the nexus between the aforementioned policy realms in markedly divergent formats. The European Parliament subsumes health policy to environmental policy, whereas the Council entwines health with employment, social policy and consumer affairs. Meanwhile, the European Commission has a Directorate-General specifically dedicated to health and food safety. Curiously, while the EU’s two global health strategies (the 2022 one and its 2010 predecessor) have been collaboratively drafted by this and other Directorates-General, the ones responsible for environment, climate change and agriculture have never been formally involved. Through interviews with public officials and experts, this article seeks to explain this type of mismatches and omissions, as well as their likely consequences in terms of implementing the EU’s "One Health" agenda. It then proceeds to put forward a series of guidelines to better mainstream "One Health" across major EU institutions. All in all, the article offers a timely illustration of the challenges and opportunities of relational approaches in policy-making.