Patients' rights in cross-border healthcare within the EU: Towards a common health area

The paper explores European patients' rights to cross-border healthcare. It discusses limited competences of the EU in the field of public health, which is predominantly reserved for the Member States and explains how the EU Court nevertheless managed to interpret economic freedoms of the EU internal market so as to guarantee rights for the European patients. A significant event that was considered a great advance in the field was the judgment of the EU Court in the case of Decker and Kohll in 1998, where it established an alternative procedure by which patients who have received treatment in another member state without previous authorization can demand a reimbursement from the social security system of their country of origin. On this basis, the paper analyses recently adopted Directive 2011/24/EU, which entitles patients to obtain healthcare in any other EU Member State and to have these healthcare costs reimbursed by the healthcare system in their home country. The directive establishes a compromise between the historic compartmentalisation of the national health systems and the increasing rights of EU citizens deriving from the free movement of services. The paper concludes that by way of the EU Court's case law and the Directive 2011/24/EU we are approaching the vision of the founding fathers of the EU regarding the common EU health area. Nevertheless, because of the differences among the social systems of the EU Member States full implementation of this vision is not plausible.