Oops! … EU Did It Again! The EU’s Preference for Global Treaties vis-a-vis the Reality of WHO Politics

ABSTRACT

The European Union (EU) emerged as an agenda-setter in the World Health Organization (WHO) negotiations for a Pandemic Treaty. However, rather than endorsing the EU proposal of a binding treaty, the negotiators agreed upon a two-track process, aimed both at negotiating a Framework Convention and revising existing WHO regulations. Why did the EU achieve only partial results in the ongoing negotiations? Concerns for the defence of national sovereignty and uncertainties around its potential to effectively deliver equal access to health resources informed the position of states that vetoed the EU’s proposal. Furthermore, the EU’s principled preference for international treaties, despite the crisis of multilateral governance, has demonstrated lack of flexibility in the way the EU addresses global challenges. Instead of streamlining WHO operations, the two-track process is expected to increase the complexity of the organisation’s response to future pandemics.

KEYWORDS:

• World Health Organization
• European Union
• Pandemic Treaty
• normative power

Acknowledgements

The authors express their gratitude to Marco Pertile, Irene Landini and the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on the article.

Notes

1 A review of PT definitions goes beyond the scope of this paper. See George and Bennet (2005); Beach and Pedersen (2013); Blatter and Haverland (2014).

2 In detail: 74^th World Health Assembly (May 2021), World Health Assembly Special Session (November 2021); 1^st INB meeting (March 2022); 75^th World Health Assembly (May 2022); 2^nd INB meeting (July 2022); 3^rd INB meeting (November 2022).

3 Article 2 of the WHO's constitution provides a detailed list of its competences and establishes that it shall “act as the directing and co-ordinating authority on international health work”. See: https://apps.who.int/gb/bd/PDF/bd47/EN/constitution-en.pdf.

4 The non-EU signatory countries were: Fiji, Britain, Rwanda, Kenya, Korea, Chile, Costa Rica, Albania, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Senegal, Norway, Serbia, Indonesia and Ukraine. The EU signatory countries were Portugal, Italy, Romania, France, Germany, Greece, Croatia, the Netherlands and Spain.

5 See: https://www.who.int/about/governance/world-health-assembly/seventy-fourth-world-health-assembly.

6 Other areas were: nomenclature of diseases, standards for diagnostic procedures, standards for and advertising and labelling of biological and pharmaceutical products in international commerce.

7 A special WHA session was convened on the premature death of the WHO Director-General, Dr Lee Jong-wook, to facilitate the procedure to elect the next Director-General.

Additional information

Funding

Research for this article was carried out within the 2020_Covid 19 project, funded by the University of Trento, “L’Organizzazione Mondiale della Sanità nell’emergenza Covid-19: funzioni, limiti e impatto sul territorio”.

Notes on contributors

Emanuela Bozzini

Emanuela Bozzini is Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Trento, Trento, Italy. Email: [email protected]

Daniela Sicurelli

Daniela Sicurelli is Professor of Political Science at the University of Trento, Trento, Italy.