ABSTRACT
The European Union (EU) is in the midst of a period of extraordinary turbulence and constitutional creativity. All sorts of options are open – from the failure of its complex new structures to the creation of a new kind of EU that essentially determines member state priorities and spending. For decades, the EU has been easy to characterise for its ‘constitutional asymmetry’ in which its design favours market-making deregulation and reregulation over social policy (Scharpf 2002). This is certainly case for pharmaceuticals and medical devices. Public health and health care services fit neatly into this schema, with the EU deregulating access to health care by obliging it to comply with the free movement and competition rules of the European market while reregulating, with greater or lesser success, to promote public health and encouraging health policy change in member states.
