[Comment] The Lancet Commission on the European Health Union: strengthening the union for and through health

Abstract

The key purposes of the European Union (EU) to date have been peace, prosperity, environmental protection, and the promotion of common interests in the wider world.1,2 In some ways, health has always been integral to these aims: during the 1980s, Europe Against Cancer and Europe Against HIV paved the way for EU public health policy, consolidated in the Maastricht (1992) and Amsterdam (1997) Treaties and Article 168 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU on public health.3 Concrete EU health policies do not, however, amount to a comprehensive vision of a union that reaps the full benefits of joint action for health.