ADVOCATING FOR A EUROPEAN HEALTH AGENCY

Author: Guy Verhofstadt, Member of the European Parliament

"I want to recall a book by two American-British economists and political scientists, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, published in 2012: Why Nations Fail. Their thesis is as simple as it is genius. Nations, and by extension every large public authority, will fail when they are driven by bad institutions. Because bad institutions lead to bad governance. And bad governance leads to bad results (i.e. more suffering). By contrast, good institutions will produce good governance and better results (i.e. less suffering).

Applying the theory of Acemoglu and Robinson leads in fact to the conclusion that the dramatic transmission of COVID-19 on our continent is caused not by accident, but by a lack of adequate institutions and, ditto, good governance in the European Union.

And since the end of January 2020, when Wuhan went in lockdown, we see evidence of this every single day. European citizens have been watching the daily unfolding of a crisis in which national authorities are taking half measures pointing in different directions, when we all know that decisions should be taken centrally following one line of command during a pandemic. A pandemic is not like war; it is war. And what we have seen in Europe during these past eight weeks is exactly the opposite: 27 centres of decision, 27 lines of command.

If during the last two months one thing became clear, it is that we cannot continue like this; that this is not ‘business as usual’. Intergovernmental cooperation is good and necessary, but it is absolutely insufficient to tackle a pandemic crisis of the magnitude we face today. It is not with an inflation of videoconferences between ministers of health, interior or finance that we will win this war. To overcome a pandemic crisis of this magnitude, we need far more. We need one centre of decision and one line of command, and this on a continental scale.

To win this war, we need the discretionary power of a fully competent European executive. An executive that, under the democratic control of the Council (member states) and Parliament (citizens), can fully act on the ground. This can range from issuing common mandatory rules on testing, quarantining and social distancing, common tenders and distribution of test kits, essential medicines and life-saving medical equipment to the closing of national or regional borders if deemed necessary. At the heart of this system should be a European Health Agency, composed of the continent’s best experts, instead of the 27 teams of experts we have now. Let there be no misunderstanding: the national or regional level would remain responsible for issues related to health systems, medicines or hospitals. There is absolutely no reason to centralise that. But they would have to work under the umbrella of a common mandatory European rulebook when a severe crisis like a pandemic occurs.

If, we recognise the weaknesses of our governance and the inadequacies of our European institutions and above all have the courage to reform them, we shall not only beat COVID-19 but we will come out of the crisis stronger and more determined than ever before."