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As EU Health Law and Policy is often seen as a creation of courts, rather than legislatures or executives, Clemens Rieder investigates the roles that national courts and the CJEU have played in the unfolding of EU Health Law and Policy. Rieder considers the implications of both actual litigation, and the ‘shadow of litigation’, which may indeed be more important. The relationships of the CJEU with national courts, the governments of the Member States and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg are all crucial institutional contexts for the development and future trajectory of EU Health Law and Policy. The preliminary reference procedure grants the CJEU legitimacy, but ultimately leaves control in the hands of national courts. Member States also enjoy a horizontal dialogic relationship with the CJEU, where both actors have influence. The ECtHR may be of growing importance in the coming years.

The exponential growth of electronic communication and exchange of medical data has changed and will continue to change the course of medicine in a wide variety of ways. The possibility of speed and long-distance communication means information (including confidential information) can pass very swiftly from country to country. André den Exter explores the way in which eHealth and mHealth interact with EU law on cross-border relationships; considering the use of electronic prescriptions; cross-border access to electronic records; and deployment of apps dealing with medicine and lifestyle choices.

Johan van de Gronden and Catalin Rusu investigate the extent to which EU competition law and policy may improve, or worsen, the efficiency of national health systems. The application of EU competition law to the behaviour of powerful market actors, such as the pharmaceutical industry, (social) health insurance providers or hospital chains, certainly has the potential to do so. But this may be at the cost of health-specific values.