Abstract
This paper examines how European public health policy has been developed, and focuses on the historical achievement on Alcohol Policy reached between the EU and its Member States. Since the EU has promoted the free movement of persons, goods, and services, we should ask what influence these free movements have on the public health sector. The EU acts by using soft law and hard law at EU level, not only in its capacity as a free trade zone but also as a European social model.
Since European public health policy has been historically formed as a part of a social protection measure for each Member State, responsibility for health policy remains with each Member State. However, EU is playing on increasingly important role in public health with the development of European integration.
Public Health has emerged not only as a separate policy but also as a important aspect of other policies such as agriculture, employment, competition, and consumer protection.
First, we discuss how public health policy is formed and developed in the EU. Public health policies sometimes concern internal market matters, quality and safety of goods, such as the quality of products affecting health, for example, alcohol, and tobacco, medical equipment, and medical supplies, blood, and organs.
Secondly, this paper focuses on the policy of reducing alcohol-related harm. We would like to review the background of alcohol policy and ask why an alcoholic policy came into being and how the public health policy has given it a legal basis and allowed strategies to be practiced at the EU level.
Finally, we will examine what has been going on in the field of public health at EU level. A new mode of governance called the “Open Method of Coordination (OMC)” has been introduced and adapted in European public health policy as well as other social policies. We would like to discuss what impact the Lisbon treaty brings to alcohol policy both at EU and Member State level, and ask what kinds of stakeholders are exist in alcohol regulation policy.
