National Authorities Responding to the Europeanization of Healthcare Access: An Interactionist Approach Built on European Practices

We only have a patchy knowledge about how national authorities responded to the Europeanization of health care access, following the Kohll and Decker rulings on cross-border patient mobility. National responses have often been portrayed as being related to the level of misfit between national institutions and European law. A comparative study of how Swedish and French authorities reacted to cross-border health care developments shows that a more interactionist approach is needed. This paper therefore retraces the processes of implementation and engagement in European policy-making, showing that domestic usages matter the most in the different making of the French and Swedish EU health policies.