Editorial Health Law: Facing the European Challenges

The creation of the European Association of Health Law in 2008, was a consequence of the increasing Europeanization of health law in an area where medicine and technology are increasingly sophisticated, and health care is becoming more and more in the hands of private parties. In my Editorial in this Journal on the envisaged creation of the EAHL, I justified the creation of the Association, among other reasons, by the following: “Present days challenges to health law are not new, but different in scale, scope and magnitude. New developments in medical science and technology will continuously give rise to different, more complicated legal issues requiring an appropriate European answer. European developments in health related fields go on with a rapid pace, in particular the convergence of health policies and systems instigated by the European Union and the systematic refinement of human rights in relation to bio-medicine in the context of the Council of Europe.”

The keynote speeches held during the second conference of the EAHL in addressing issues that are at the heart of this statement, are proof of the fact that the Association’s European conferences of health lawyers (in the future to be held on a biannual basis), are an appropriate forum for addressing and discussing issues of importance in the development of health law and policies. Against the same background, I expect that the present Editorial will show that EAHL interest groups are another essential forum for health lawyers in Europe.

Three out of the four keynotes presented during the second conference of the Association are published in this issue of the Journal.4 The fourth article5 lays in an extended version of the keynote speech on “Governing risk, examining the politics of EU regulation of human material” held by the article’s author during the Conference. A report on the Conference by Graeme Laurie, chair of the Association, is published in this issue in the News and Views section. In the following I will explore, from a European institutional perspective, some of the main health law issues that emerge from the four articles in this issue.

Abstract:

The fall of 2009 was marked by three important events for European health law. The Council of Europe Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine celebrated its 10th anniversary of entry into force, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (integrated in the Treaty of Lisbon) entered into force and the second conference of the European Association of Health Law (EAHL) was held on the theme, “Learning lessons and making differences: Improving the future of health law in Europe”.