De Grove-Valdeyron, Nathalie and Blanquet, Marc (2021) D'une vague l'autre, la compétence de l'union vis-à-vis des menaces transfrontières graves de santé publique à l'épreuve et à l'école de la Covid-19. In : Coronavirus et droit de l'Union européenne Picod, Fabrice and Dubout, Edouard (eds.) Bruylant. Series “Collection droit de l'Union européenne - Monographies” Bruxelles pp. 19-72. ISBN 978 2 8027 7000 8

Abstract

The competence of the European Union in the field
of public health is essentially a competence to carry out actions to support, coordinate or supplement the policies of the Member States.
Such competence shall cover “monitoring, early warning of and combating serious cross-border threats to health”. The COVID-19 crisis has revealed the deficiencies of this coordination. Even if some areas for improvement have been identified, the worst has been the real difficulties in ensuring the availability of necessary medicines and medical
devices. This lack of “health sovereignty” should lead to considering this issue as a new “common safety concern in public health matters”and to accepting this extension of the public health competence shared between the European Union and the Member States.