EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF HEALTH LAW最新文献

This paper investigates the structural limitations of cross-border healthcare mobility under Directive 2011/24/EU, analysing whether the European Health Data Space (EHDS) could offer a constitutionally compatible solution to its limited practical effectiveness. Although the directive formally recognises patients' right to reimbursement for treatment abroad, organisational fragmentation and inadequate digital interoperability persistently constrain its effective exercise. Against this background, the article introduces the interpretative concept of 'non-immediate primary use' of electronic health data. This is defined as a professionally mediated and infrastructural process designed to identify appropriate cross-border treatment options when national systems are clearly inadequate. Using obesity as a case study of structural discrimination, the analysis argues that digital coordination under the EHDS could implement existing mobility rights without expanding the competences of the Union under Article 168(7) TFEU. The EHDS is therefore presented as an infrastructural instrument that can reinforce substantive equality within the current constitutional allocation of powers.

A collectively authored article, which (unusually in legal scholarship) makes explicit the processes and methodologies by which 'European Union health law' is conceptualised; the implications; and the strengths and weaknesses of the approach taken. Strengths include implied structural and systemic coherence; and the breadth of analysis that having a large team of authors permits, through holding their positionalities in creative interplay with each other. The authors argue that European Union health law - defined as transversal and distinctively European Union law that either directly or indirectly affects human health, in a broad sense - should be understood through a metaphor of growth and connectedness, specifically a 'tree'. The article seeks to initiate a discussion not only about European Union health law, but also about European law and health law.

As European care systems increasingly depend on informal support, family members often assume caregiving roles without clear legal recognition. This paper examines to what extent such caregivers qualify as rights-holders under international human rights law, focusing on their position vis-à-vis care recipients and professionals. Drawing on the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), it identifies three types of caregiver rights: (1) Derivative rights, when inadequate support for recipients imposes a disproportionate burden; (2) Autonomous parallel rights, when caregivers' own rights, such as privacy or moral integrity, are directly affected; and (3) Autonomous conflicting rights, when caregiver and recipient claims collide, requiring balancing. The CRPD promotes a relational but subordinate recognition of caregiver rights, whereas the ECtHR adopts a balancing approach that can afford greater weight. A coherent rights-based framework must recognize interdependence and ensure principled balancing where rights intersect.

Could the emergence of a surrogacy market in France, despite its prohibition by the French Civil Code, be the tip of a social iceberg? This article aims to analyse the individualization of Law and society. Through innovative legal constructs, the possessors of rights provided by national Law are demanding changes to the law to suit their individual interests. By anchoring their desire in an existing subjective right, legal subjects situate the fulfillment of this desire within the legal domain, while raising the question of its normative dimension. Beyond traditional questions of legal agility, optimization and discursive dimension of the use of available rights, the consequences are crucial: because individualization is growing, the law is no longer a collective and social phenomenon, but a tool that the judge adjusts according to the desired result. What is at stake here is the meaning of Law, Justice and, ultimately, society itself.

In the EU rules on the right to reimbursement of cross-border healthcare, no specific or additional protection is provided to patients with rare diseases. This approach is inconsistent with other EU measures in the field of rare diseases, such as the Orphan Medicinal Products Regulation. This "gap" in legal protection should be filled by relying on the Charter of Fundamental Rights. The CJEU has developed a non-discrimination "frame" for cross-border healthcare cases in A v Veselības Ministrija, which should be applied to patients with rare diseases. This means that, to avoid discrimination on the ground of disability, additional protection mechanisms should be developed for patients with rare diseases in the procedure for requesting prior authorisation of cross-border medical treatment. Patients can rely on these mechanisms throughout the procedure for prior authorisation.

Historically, the Nordic countries have maintained stable abortion regulations since the 1970s, with only minor adjustments, apart from the Icelandic liberalisation in 2019, which significantly upped the limit for access to abortion on demand to week 22. However, the 2025 reforms in Norway and Denmark now align the two countries with Sweden, establishing an 18-week limit for self-determined abortion. This article traces the background and substance of these recent changes.