维护世界卫生组织：欧盟的下一步行（英文）

NO. 47 OCTOBER 2020 Introduction Upholding the World Health Organization Next Steps for the EU Susan Bergner, Remco van de Pas, Louise van Schaik and Maike Voss Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the European Union (EU) was neither a strong pro-moter of global health nor a strong supporter of the World Health Organization (WHO). The Global Health Council Conclusions from 2010 were never comprehensively implemented and quickly forgotten. With the pandemic greatly affecting EU member states, the EU is increasingly interested in upholding multilateral cooperation in the global health field. Therefore, the EU should aim for an upgrading of the EU’s status in WHO, the establishment of a global health unit in the European External Action Service (EEAS), and an overhaul of the formal relationship between the European Commission and WHO. The pandemic discloses the discrepancy between the EU advocating for global access to a COVID-19 vaccine while at the same time safeguarding its own access to it. Its refusal to alter patent laws that serve to protect the commercial and innovation in-terests of pharmaceutical companies based in EU countries can equally be questioned on grounds of global solidarity. A revamped global health strategy is needed to over-come such issues and make the EU a reli-able and capable partner on global health that gives WHO a central role. Global Health Policy Undervalued As public health policy-making remains mainly a national competence under Euro-pean legislation, the EU can coordinate and complement the policies of member states. The Union’s global health policy-making lacked visibility in recent decades, although the EU is traditionally a promoter of effec-tive multilateralism. With its Council Con-clusions on global health, adopted in 2010, the EU committed itself to stronger global health governance – including support-ing WHO and the United Nations (UN) sys-tem – focusing on Universal Health Cover-age, strengthening health systems, as well as recognising the need for a “Health in All Policies” approach, including in the EU’s external actions. However, the Conclusions never received the strong backing of health, development, and foreign ministries of EU member states, as the EU was primarily seen as a development actor rather than a strategic agent in global health. Thus, EU member states decided in an incoherent way on how large a budget that they and the European Commission would make SWP Comment 47 October 2020 2 available for international health priorities, initiatives, and institutions such as WHO. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, global health was not a priority on the European political agenda, and both the health and international development cooperation mandate was reclaimed by EU member states; with some exceptions being issues in fashion, such as anti-microbial resist-ance and digital health. COVID-19: The EU’s Wake-up Call to Global Health? The EU has been struggling to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, as member state