Introduction: the EC/EU and Health Policy

Abstract

Few could have envisaged the way in which the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951, by the Treaty of Paris, would lead on to five decades of European institution building and European policy-making. Those adults who, now aged over 60, dreamt in 1950 of a Europe in which warring nation states counted for much less and the common interests of ordinary Europeans counted for a great deal more, may be disappointed with the state of the EU at the end of the 20th century. But they might — nevertheless — feel some satisfaction at what European cooperation has achieved and permit themselves some optimism about where it is leading. It is a long way from constructing an organisation designed to build and sustain economic integration — in coal and steel production — to a pan-European political framework and institutional apparatus which, among many many other things, seeks to make and influence health policy for almost all of Westem Europe’s democracies.