Healthcare systems commodification between national and EU economic governance: Greece, Italy, and Romania from the economic to the COVID-19 crisis (2008–2022)

Costanza Galanti and Stella Christou

Chapter 8 in Critical Political Economy of the European Polycrisis, 2025, pp 107-128 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: In this chapter, we adopt a Critical Political Economy approach to interpret the transformation of healthcare systems during the European polycrisis (2008–2022). Drawing on an in-country and between-countries comparison of the Greek, Italian and Romanian cases, we argue that EU economic governance had a significant role in pushing for commodification in member states’ healthcare systems. We demonstrate this, first, by showing how countries subjected to stronger degrees of constraint within the EU economic governance regime implemented more intense and more explicit reforms aimed at healthcare commodification. Second, we demonstrate it by tracing how, despite the varying degrees of constraint, developments within the EU economic governance regime resulted in similar changes in the character of healthcare commodification processes across countries. More specifically, we identified how, over the years, the EU economic governance went from pushing for a ‘commodification-cum-retrenchment’, to fostering an ‘embedded commodification’, and finally to promoting a ‘publicly-funded uneven commodification’.

Keywords: EU economic governance regime; Greece; Healthcare commodification; Italy; Polycrisis; Romania (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035347933
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