EU May Combine Green Deal With White Deal To Fight COVID19

As EU national leaders prepare for a crucial video summit tomorrow on how to respond to the economic crisis caused by Coronavirus, about half the member countries are insisting that the EU Green Deal to fight climate change unveiled in December for the backbone of the strategy.

But given that the immediate healthcare needs of the outbreak are preoccupying most governments at the moment, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has floated an idea: why not combine the environment plan with a white deal for healthcare?

“Certainly, the reserves in most countries have turned out to be too small in view of this pandemic,” she told Germany’s Focus magazine. “The identified deficits teach us that in future we will have to think differently about our health systems. That also applies to the amount of reserves for paying healthcare workers”.

The idea has been described as a “white deal” by German media in reference to the color associated with healthcare, although the president has not used the term herself.

Up till now healthcare policy has been almost entirely the preserve of member states, with little opportunity for the EU to get involved. European countries have widely divergent healthcare systems, with some like the UK and Italy having single payer systems while others have private systems with a public option. The lack of EU competence over healthcare has inhibited the ability of Brussels to take decisive action during the Coronavirus crisis.

Von der Leyen suggested that it may be time to give more coordinating power over healthcare to Brussels, in order to be better prepared for the next health crisis. One example would be if national governments agree to give Brussels the ability to intervene in supply chains of medical equipment, to ensure the EU isn’t entirely dependent on an outside supplier. “For me it is clear that we need to improve our European crisis preparedness and that vital products should not depend on a single producer outside the EU,” she told the magazine.

“Because such a virus can come back at any time, permanent medical reserves for critical medical devices are needed. In addition, we have to expand standardized data collection across Europe so that all important information is available at the push of a button in the next crisis.”    

National governments in the EU have in the past been extremely reticent to give the EU powers in the area of health, and that instinct has only hardened in the past two months during the crisis. But many politicians are now saying it has been a mistake for national governments to jealously guard healthcare competence, one that has cost lives in the form of an uncoordinated EU response to the crisis.

“So far, the EU has been able to do too little when it comes to cooperation in the health sector,” Tiemo Wölken, health policy spokesman for the German Social Democrats in the European Parliament, told the magazine.