Evidence in EU health law and policymaking

Abstract

This presentation will introduce the workshop’s central question: how evidence becomes legally and politically actionable in public health regulation. It will examine how evidence supports not only the identification of health problems, but also the justification, proportionality, legitimacy, and design of regulatory action. In doing so, it will situate legal surveillance as a method for assessing whether public health evidence is reflected in law and policy. Using diabetes prevention as a case study, the presentation will show how legal surveillance can assess whether EU legal and policy instruments reflect established public health evidence and implementation priorities. By mapping binding and non-binding measures, it will identify regulatory gaps, fragmented policy attention, and uneven alignment with WHO recommendations, demonstrating how legal surveillance can support more evidence-responsive EU policymaking.