New Governance Responses to Healthcare Migration in the EU: The EU Guidelines on Block Purchasing

Abstract

This article focuses on a single case of a ‘new governance’ response to healthcare migration in the European Union: the EU Guidelines on block purchasing of cross-border healthcare 2005. Using this focus, the article highlights the differences between legal doctrinal analysis and other analytical or critical frameworks as applied to this new phenomenon of ‘governance’ in the European Union. It notes the predominant concerns of a ‘legal’ and a ‘governance’ framework for analysis. It then considers the basis of the Guidelines, the bodies concerned with their enforcement, the effects of the Guidelines, the relationship between law and implementation and the desirability of litigation, through each of the two analytical frameworks employed. Given the synergy between legal and new governance approaches to solving problems relating to healthcare migration in the EU, the article concludes that a synergistic framework for analysis, bringing together both ‘legal’ and ‘governance’ concerns, offers the most appropriate holistic approach for EU law and policy studies of this nature.