The COVID-19 pandemic had markedly uneven impacts on quality of life across Europe, revealing substantial differences in demographic outcomes among European countries and regions. This study investigates whether changes in life expectancy during the pandemic were shaped by pre-pandemic social and environmental conditions, and how these relationships varied across country groups, spatial scales, and different phases of the pandemic. The analysis covers all 27 Member States of the European Union at both the national and NUTS2 regional levels, using life expectancy at birth as a core indicator of quality of life and population health.

The examined outcome measures are pre-pandemic life expectancy in 2019, changes in life expectancy during the pandemic period (2020–2022), and post-pandemic life expectancy in 2023. A combination of standard and spatial regression analyses is applied to assess the extent to which pre-pandemic socioeconomic and contextual characteristics influenced pandemic-related changes in life expectancy, while accounting for spatial dependence and regional heterogeneity.

The results show that pre-pandemic life expectancy was associated with socioeconomic conditions, although the nature and strength of these associations differed systematically between post-socialist Member States and the rest of the European Union. Moreover, these pre-pandemic characteristics were significantly related to the severity of life expectancy declines during the pandemic, with notable variation across individual pandemic years. Regional-level analyses reveal more pronounced spatial heterogeneity and stronger temporal dynamics than country-level analyses, highlighting substantial intra-national disparities that are obscured in national averages. By 2023, spatial patterns of life expectancy had partially converged toward their pre-pandemic configuration.

Overall, the pandemic highlighted the structural strengths and vulnerabilities of different European macro-regions. Examining the spatiotemporal dynamics of life expectancy during the COVID-19 period provides important insights for post-pandemic recovery policies and for improving preparedness for future large-scale public health crises, particularly in a multi-level governance context such as the EU.

Health inequalities remain a central concern in contemporary European studies, particularly in debates on welfare states, social protection, and post-pandemic governance. While much of this scholarship is empirically grounded in European contexts, comparatively less attention has been paid to how insights from the Global South can inform European understandings of health inequality, institutional capacity, and policy design. This paper contributes to European health and social policy debates by offering a comparative and analytical perspective grounded in empirical research from rural Jharkhand, India. Drawing on Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), ethnographic in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and analysis of secondary health data, the paper examines how healthcare disparities are produced through the interaction of institutional design, infrastructural deficits, and everyday administrative practices. The analysis foregrounds mechanisms such as discretionary gatekeeping, uneven outreach, and cultural and linguistic mismatches between health systems and marginalised populations. These mechanisms shape health-seeking behaviour characterised by delayed care, partial treatment, and reliance on informal providers, resulting in persistent inequalities despite formal policy commitments. The paper situates these findings within broader debates in European studies on governance, social inclusion, and the limits of universalist policy frameworks. It argues that the disjuncture between global or national health goals and local outcomes observed in rural India resonates with challenges faced by marginalised populations within Europe, including migrants, ethnic minorities, and residents of peripheral regions. By tracing how macro-level policy ambitions are mediated through frontline institutions, the study highlights structural similarities across contexts, even where welfare capacities differ. Rather than offering a direct policy transfer, the paper advances a reflexive comparative approach that treats Global South contexts as analytically generative rather than exceptional. It demonstrates how community-driven methods such as PRA can deepen understandings of governance failure, citizen–state relations, and health inequality, which is an issues central to contemporary European studies. In doing so, the paper aligns with UACES’ commitment to broadening disciplinary and geographical perspectives while contributing to ongoing debates on equitable health governance in the post-COVID-19 era.

In studies, which approach policymaking from a realistic stance, policy programs are commonly understood either as detached of implementation or merely as a first step in the policy cycle. This paper applies constructivist approach and departs from the notion that policy programs are integral part of policymaking and important not only in terms of framing the problems, setting the goals, defining means but also as constituting actors. Simultaneously, actors play a pivotal role in the production, dissemination and setting in motion the programs.

This paper provides comparative cross-national analysis on the mutually constitutive role of political-administrative bodies and policy programs in implementing intersectoral policy. Health in All Policies (HiAP)- approach and it´s manifestation in the form of programs and bodies in different national contexts is presented as an empirical case of intersectoral policy. The countries compared are Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Norway and Portugal. As these countries represent different economic, political and cultural traditions of welfare production, and consequently this is assumed to increase variation in interpreting and implementing socially progressive concept such as HiAP, the comparative interest doesn´t lay in finding differences, but instead the focus is on commonalities. This research aims to answer following questions: What are the main public health programs and intersectoral bodies advancing HiAP- approach across the countries? Is there linkage between specific programs and bodies and if yes, in what ways they are intertwined? The data consists of variety of policy documents (e.g., strategies, programs, government resolutions, legislation, regulations, guidelines, recommendations, evaluations, reports, webpages) published 2019-2024 by government agencies from nine European countries.

The results indicate that political administrative bodies play an important role in implementation of HiAP approach nationally, and they essentially work by producing different kind of policy documents (e.g., programs, guidelines, recommendations, evaluations) of which programs and strategies are here studied in more detail. Results also indicate that programs are not only authored, published and distributed by these bodies, but oftentimes they are also executed, financed and evaluated by them.

This empirical observation of them being mutually constitutive categories in HiAP implementation across countries challenges the often-presented idea that programs would just be “rhetoric” without actual implementation. The mutually constitutive role of programs and structures is an understudied area and must be considered when analyzing the implementation of intersectoral policy such as HiAP.