Recently, you conducted research on the securitisation of health in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic. What does it mean for health to be “securitised”? What are some potential risks and benefits of framing health as a security issue?
As many scholars have noted, there is a growing “securitisation” trend that permeates many policy areas, including migration, technology, energy, climate change and – yes – also health. In practice, this means that politicians and the media frame a certain issue – say, COVID-19 and other health crises – as a security challenge. This discursive image is constructed and reconstructed through words like ‘threat’, ‘emergency’, or ‘war’.
Academics have long debated the pros and cons of the political construction of a “health security” paradigm. On the one hand, framing health concerns as a security issue can be an effective way to channel public attention and resources towards solving the problem at hand. What is more, by raising the stakes of health matters, this paradigm can empower the World Health Organization (WHO) to fulfil its often-elusive mandate to act as the coordinating authority in global health. This framing could even plausibly help developing countries to circumvent the intellectual property rights attached to vaccines and other medical countermeasures, by invoking a “security exception” at the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Securitisation is constructed and reconstructed through words like ‘threat’, ‘emergency’, or ‘war’.
On the other hand, it is also true that health securitisation can lead to potentially negative consequences. We saw many of these drawbacks manifest in the context of COVID-19: just think of the frequently counter-productive border closures enforced in response to the health ‘threat’, or the stigmatisation faced by certain countries and ethnicities affected by outbreaks. In addition, securitising health can exacerbate local inequalities by privileging elite access to healthcare, as well as intensifying global disparities by de-prioritising those diseases from which the developed world does not feel threatened. A final consideration is that the securitisation of health may enable governments to take actions – in the name of protecting their populations – that end up constraining civic rights. These scenarios provide very real causes for concern within the wider health community.
As you note, the COVID-19 crisis was often framed as a “war against a common enemy.” Based on your research, how did EU institutions respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in terms of security? Does this represent a major change in the EU’s health-related discourse?
Playing the securitisation card can be tempting for any institution striving to consolidate its standing, especially in the face of limited legal competences. My research suggests that the European Commission followed this approach extensively during the COVID-19 pandemic. This clear embrace of a “health security” discourse represented a significant rhetorical shift, which can be traced in strategic documents, as well as in public addresses such as the annual State of the European Union speeches by the President of the European Commission. Moreover, this rhetoric was followed by concrete policy initiatives, such as the establishment of the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA) as a new Directorate-General within the Commission as well as the reinforcement of the European Centre for DiseasePrevention and Control (ECDC) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA). The Commission also proposed a new regulation on serious cross-border threats to health, which was adopted in 2022. These and other measures were conceived as the foundations of a burgeoning “European Health Union” – an initiative aiming to bolster pandemic preparedness and enhance the protection of European health.
That said, it is unclear whether this shift towards a greater “health security” focus will last in the longer term and to what extent it will be internalised by EU institutions, member states, and the wider public. Another way to approach these questions is to look at the“healthification” of security – the flip side of this debate whereby health would play an increasing role in security strategies and structures. As my article shows, EU institutions do not seem to be adopting this discursive framework. This means that health priorities are struggling to make their way into the EU’s broader security-related discourse and agenda, particularly as the COVID-19 pandemic is increasingly seen as a thing of the past.
What do your findings reveal about the EU’s identity as a global health actor? And what steps should the EU take to be a strategic partner on global health governance going forward?
COVID-19 forced the EU to mature as a health actor, but this coming-of-age came mostly through a more prominent domestic role and the larger policy toolkit at its disposal. When it comes to the EU’s identity and defining a long-term, coherent strategy on global health, the picture is much more complicated. There have been positive contributions, such as “Team Europe” initiatives and the promotion of ongoing multilateral efforts to adopt a pandemic agreement under WHO auspices. However, there is still confusion about what the EU stands for when it comes to global health – arguably, even more so than before the pandemic. This is not exclusively an EU problem: other global health actors also put out contradicting agendas and plans, struggle to reconcile short-term and long-term goals, and have a difficult time balancing economic and public health considerations.
There is still confusion about what the EU stands for when it comes to global health.
Still, that does not get the EU off the hook – especially given its own recent branding as a “leader” in the field of health (for example, in the Commission’s 2022 Global Health Strategy). This subjective identity does not always resonate in the Global South. In those countries, substantial resentment remains over how the EU and the West writ large handled this pandemic (and previous ones), partly due to an overly securitised, self-preserving mindset which culminated in what some have referred to as “vaccine nationalism”.
Moving forward, the EU needs to work on its international credibility if it wants to be perceived more broadly as a strategic partner in the field, rather than just an important actor. This will require stepping up to meet a widespread demand for equity in global health – for example, by further accommodating developing countries’ health agendas at the WTO, but also by doing more to promote technology transfer and capacity-building. Work also remains to be done within the WHO. When US President Trump attempted to withdraw the US from the WHO in 2020, the EU emerged as a robust supporter of the organisation. From January 2025 onward, the EU and its Member States will once again need to rally behind the WHO and try to make sure it receives sufficient financial support and public legitimacy in the coming years. While major multilateral breakthroughs will be very difficult to attain, at least there is hope in weathering the storm.
This contribution is based on the author's recent article, "The European Union’s Securitisation of Global Health: was COVID-19 a Zeitenwende?". Óscar Fernández is a Researcher in ENSURED and a Postdoctoral Researcher at Maastricht University, where is work primarily focuses on the intersection between EU external action and global health governance.
Photo: Diana Polekhina / Unsplash (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
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