Conference Agenda

In 2024, the EU adopted an interinstitutional body for ethical standards. The Ethics Body aims to restore trust through ethics, integrity and transparency. These are ‘essential for maintaining the trust of Union citizens in the political, legislative and administrative work of the Union institutions’. This paper examines whether the establishment of the EU ethics body is likely to achieve its objective within the legislative process. It focuses on one case study: how the EU has regulated to address antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

AMR is an urgent global health threat that will only be addressed if the EU tackles its complex and interrelated factors through a One Health Approach. This is an integrated, multifaceted, multisectoral public health intervention. To this effect, and to build trust in its approach to AMR, the EU must overcome conflicting interests that hamper the development and implementation of progressive regulation. In particular, the EU must reflect on how a One Health Approach can best protect public health, whilst being cognisant of the economic interests of the pharmaceutical and agrifood industries – two sectors of the EU’s economy that tend to promote excessive antimicrobial consumption (the main cause of AMR) to maximise their profits.

This focus enables us to uncover the effectiveness of the body. The paper argues that the Ethics Body represents a chance to comprehend the extent to which conflicts of interest emerge across the EU legislative process on AMR. This is with the introduction of new common minimum ethical standards across institutions. However, since it is not supported by appropriate accountability mechanisms, EU institutions will remain to struggle to restore citizen’s trust in the legislative process particularly, as they relate to complex societal issues such as AMR.

The new European Commission can expect turbulent and power-based trade policies especially in relation to the United States, but also European Union rules-based focus will be under change. The focus of our analysis is on the direction and changing relationship between European Union trade and health policy especially in relation to the EU Treaty obligations to ensure high level of health protection in all policies as well as the precautionary principle. We will analyse how trade-related regulatory principles and new industry driven principles such as innovation principle relate to these obligations. Furthermore, the division of competence has further implications for trade policy negotiations and sustainable financing of health systems. As health systems have become more commercialized, they have become part of wider interests of trade policy. In addition to higher costs of novel pharmaceuticals, new technologies and digitalisation provide novel avenues for trade with consequences to governance, access to data, and sustainable financing of health systems. Our presentation will report initial results from our Research Council of Finland project asking if trade and investment agreements protect public health and universal health coverage. In this presentation our focus will be on new and emergent challenges for trade negotiations in the light of recently finalized EU trade negotiations, policymaker interviews, trade-related documents, and broader policy documents concerning i) precautionary principle and health protection, ii) post-pandemic priorities in the context of intellectual property rights and pharmaceuticals, and iii) commercialisation and health systems governance.

This paper examines the political dimensions shaping forced migrants' access to health and healthcare in the EU. Despite international recognition of health as a fundamental human right, forced migrants face significant barriers to healthcare access, stemming from both limited legal entitlements and practical implementation challenges. The analysis explores three key aspects: the inter- and supranational legal framework and policy-making processes in the host states affecting health(care) access; forced migrants' specific health needs and circumstances across pre-migration, migration, and post-migration phases; and the challenges arising from healthcare policies' increasing politicisation. The paper argues that treating forced migrants' access to health(care) primarily as a migration policy issue rather than a public health concern creates ethical dilemmas, systemic inefficiencies and risks to public health.

The prevention and reduction of alcohol consumption has been declared a public health priority. One important legal intervention is comprehensive restrictions on the marketing of alcohol – such marketing being associated with its increased consumption and normalization. The European Union (EU) has attempted to address this problem through, inter alia, the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD). The AVMSD contains provisions which apply directly to alcohol marketing, as well as more general provisions on sponsorship. Yet, this paper proffers the view that the AVMSD is insufficient to reduce effectively consumers’ exposure to alcohol marketing. This paper attributes this to brand marketing being excluded from regulatory frameworks, so restrictions apply only to alcoholic beverages rather than brands more generally. This serves as a loophole through which the alcohol industry continues to expose consumers to its brands which are often synonymous with its products. This is a concern because brand marketing increases, normalizes, and encourages the earlier initiation of alcohol consumption.

This paper aims to conceptualize the notion of alcohol brand marketing of which there is no developed legal analysis. Having understood alcohol branding and how it is used, it reviews the current evidence- base which links alcohol brand marketing to its increased consumption and normalization. It then seeks to understand the rationale for excluding brand marketing from the AVMSD and how such exclusion can be remedied. It concludes that, without a renewed framing on what alcohol marketing constitutes, the AVMSD, as it currently stands, is insufficient to denormalize alcohol consumption.

Regulating technology can be difficult, and the current explosion of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) has left even the companies producing the technologies struggling to keep up. Through vignettes of AI supported health technologies for rare disease diagnosis and support, the paper proposes an Inclusive Design approach to regulation analysis and proposes possible models for dynamic structures to react to ever changing technologies. The main regulatory focus is the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (2018), and the EU AI Act (2023), and their interaction with use cases of Symptom Checkers.

Using Inclusive Design methodologies an argument is made that a life cycle of the capability to consent exists, especially as generative AI changes the nature of services. Through analysis of the regulations and literature, current and possible future users’ experiences of technology are parsed through hypothetical vignettes scenarios of Symptom Checker use. With these technologies, especially chatbots, companies can reduce the amount of accessibility to accountable authorities (face work), reducing agency while increasing the responsibilities of the user (shadow work). These imagine future capacities of generative AI and related benefits and dangers based on previous instances and predictions. Information provided for a service years ago could be used in manners practically unimaginable at the time of consent to the data being stored. In the new realities brought about by these technologies’ regulations will have to answer more scenarios and hopefully protect ever more marginalized users/citizens.