This panel explores the EU as a global health actor from two (related) angles: security, and cooperation. While the EU’s role in global health has traditionally been limited, it has increased since the COVID-19 pandemic. On one hand, scholars are looking at the increased EU involvement in strengthening health security within its borders and internationally. At the same time the EU is also raising its profile as a global health actor promoting cooperation and capabilities, especially in the Global South. Arguably, both aspects are sides of the same coin, as health security depends on international collaboration. But this global health collaboration is also underpinned by tensions, as the securitisation of health presupposes an ‘us versus them’ logic of exclusion. The papers by Wenham and by Pereira explore the EU’s health security agenda, with the former focusing the EU’s role in global health security, and the latter on health security viewed from within the EU borders. The papers by Di and by Parwani explore the EU’s soft power as a global health actor: Through the empirical case of the EU’s new global health strategy, Di’s contribution explores the scope for mutual learning and cooperation with China. Parwani’s contribution analyses the EU’s role in enhancing vaccine manufacturing capacity in Africa, critically examining its intended and unintended implications.

Global health security is inextricably linked to conventional understandings of security, for example, due to the risk of theft or illicit use of dangerous pathogens that could be used for biological warfare. Recent Ebola epidemics demonstrate how civil conflict and health challenges reinforce each other. The role of the European Union (EU) in global health security, though small, has gone largely unrecognised by the global health community. During the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the EU became an increasingly prominent actor, in particular as one of the instigators of the novel Pandemic Treaty. Scholars have debated whether the EU had provided a substantial response to the pandemic or failed to do so, and questions remain around the role the EU should or could play in global health security. Using primary and secondary documentation, we give an overview of the history of the EU as an actor in global health security, and trace its role during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Interviews with high-level EU and international global health policy makers are analysed to understand how the EU's increasingly prominent role in global health security has been orchestrated and received. The paper speaks to bodies of literature on EU actorness and global health security.

The COVID-19 pandemic stands as a game changer for the European Union (EU) health security. Initially, COVID-19 was treated through a sanitary nationalist approach by member states, which led to the almost fragmentation of the EU identity and values. However, the European Commission's statements in March 2020 were crucial to coordinate and organise the EU response and characterisation of COVID-19 as an existential health threat to the Union and its citizens. Based on the collective securitisation theory, the present article aims to understand how the European Commission’s discourse conveyed the collective securitisation of COVID-19. Applying a discourse analysis to selected statements of the European Commission, the analysis reveals evidence of a recursive interaction between the EU institutions that conducted a change in the EU health status quo. Nonetheless, the emergence of specific mechanisms and measures has culminated in the new role of the EU as a Health actor internally and externally through the development of the health program EU4Health, the EU Global Strategy, and the European Health Security Framework, paving the way for a pertinent debate on the future of Health in the EU.

Through the pandemic years and beyond, the interconnected nature of public health has become clearer than ever before – no one is safe, until everyone is safe. Citing solidarity and interests of pandemic preparedness, the European Union (EU) has been taking its external role more seriously. In 2021, the Team Europe Initiatives (TEI) – consisting of the EU, EU Member States, the European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development launched an initiative on Manufacturing and Access to Vaccines, Medicines and Health Technologies (MAV+) to work with partners in Africa on strengthening local manufacturing capacity there. This is only one of several initiates by the EU to enhance vaccine manufacturing in Africa. In this paper, I seek to critically examine the intended and unintended implications for vaccine manufacturing capabilities in Africa. I first provide a brief conceptual framework for vaccine ‘manufacturing capabilities’, drawing from the Capabilities Approach as well as existing literature on manufacturing capacity. Next, I look at the implications of EU initiatives. In particular, I focus on technology transfer initiatives and state mobilization and regulation of the private sector. Finally, I assess EU actions in multilateral and bilateral trade avenues, examining whether these align with EU efforts and stated objectives in enhancing vaccine manufacturing capabilities in Africa.