| On the verge of completing the EMU, the European integration process has become political. The European Union has become a new community, and thus has new legitimacy needs. While the Union has sought to address these by establishing formal European citizenship and working on a social dimension to integration, it has been unsuccessful. This paper argues that the Union could look to health policy as an area more suitable to addressing legitimacy. While health care systems remain diverse across the member states, a historical institutionalist analysis indicates that there are similarities in values, and institutions that make health policy a likely candidate for joint-decision-making. These same values give health care an affective dimension that, once it is firmly established as a Community competence, will make it conducive to identity-building. |
