20 Years of EU health values (2006–2026): four proposals for the future

In 2006—two decades ago—all EU health ministers adopted a resolution entitled “Council Conclusions on Common values and principles in European Union Health Systems”. 1 This document articulated what they considered a distinctly European approach to healthcare, centred on universality, access to good quality care, equity, and solidarity. Around this time, national governments sought to reassert national control over health policy, often reacting against what they perceived as EU ‘encroachment’ into a domain traditionally reserved for Members States. This concern among EU Member States stemmed from the fact that some of the most consequential developments in EU health law did not originate from EU institutions, but from individual patients who challenged national restrictions by invoking their EU free-movement rights in the context of crossborder patient mobility.