European Commission Launches Global Health Security Initiative

A new EU Global Health Resilience Initiative calls for evidence on strengthening Europe's capacity to prevent and respond to health emergencies in a more volatile world.

Europe's Health Security Doctrine: Building Resilience Before the Next Crisis

The European Commission launched a call for evidence on its EU Global Health Resilience Initiative with a feedback period opening March 16, 2026, signalling a substantive policy development in how Europe thinks about health security as a component of broader resilience strategy rather than a narrow public health issue. The initiative builds on lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic and takes account of the changed security environment in which Europe now operates, where health emergencies may intersect with military conflicts, energy crises, and supply chain disruptions in ways that the pre-pandemic governance architecture was not designed to manage.

The initiative's core questions include: How should Europe strengthen its capacity to manufacture critical medical countermeasures domestically rather than depending on supply chains that proved vulnerable during COVID-19? What role should HERA — the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority established after the pandemic — play in coordinating Europe's response to future health emergencies, and should its mandate and financing be expanded? How should Europe engage with global health security frameworks to ensure that threats are detected and contained before they reach European borders?

The current environment — with a significant active conflict in the Middle East generating potential for biological threat proliferation alongside the more conventional weapons already in use, and with refugee and displacement flows from Lebanon and potentially Iran creating public health challenges in receiving countries — illustrates in real time why health security cannot be siloed from the broader security policy debate. The Commission's initiative reflects awareness that resilience is a comprehensive concept requiring integration across policy domains.