Europe's One Health Surveillance Systems Are Ahead on Data, Behind on Governance
EU-level investment has built some of the most sophisticated integrated human-animal-environmental surveillance data systems in the world. Using them across fragmented national governance structures is the unfinished half.
European institutions have made substantial investment in integrated One Health surveillance, building data systems that link human disease reporting, veterinary surveillance, and environmental monitoring in ways few regions in the world can match technically. The unfinished part isn't the data infrastructure. It's the governance structure needed to act on integrated signals quickly across a region where health, veterinary, and environmental authority is split across national governments, EU institutions, and in some cases regional or local authorities within a single country.
Good data, distributed authority
When an integrated surveillance system flags an unusual pattern spanning human and animal health data, in practice, the ability to act quickly depends on how well national veterinary authorities, public health agencies, and EU-level coordinating bodies can move together. That coordination varies significantly by country and by which agencies happen to have strong existing working relationships. The technical capability to detect a cross-sector signal has, in several cases, outpaced the institutional capability to respond to it with matching speed.
Antimicrobial resistance is the clearest test case
AMR surveillance across Europe illustrates the pattern well. Data systems tracking resistance patterns across human clinical settings, veterinary use, and agricultural runoff are genuinely sophisticated. Translating a concerning resistance trend into coordinated policy action, such as adjusted veterinary antibiotic use regulations or targeted clinical stewardship programs, requires alignment across agricultural ministries, health ministries, and EU regulatory bodies that don't always share the same immediate priorities or timelines.
Where this has worked well, it has generally required sustained relationship building between technical agencies well before a specific crisis forced the issue, along with clear pre-agreed protocols for what triggers cross-agency action. Building that kind of standing coordination infrastructure is less visible than building the underlying data systems, but it is arguably the more important long-term investment.
A model worth exporting, carefully
Europe's technical approach to integrated surveillance is genuinely a model other regions can learn from. The governance lesson is more cautionary: sophisticated data integration without matching investment in cross-agency decision-making protocols produces systems that can see problems clearly but still respond to them slowly. Regions building One Health surveillance capacity now have an opportunity to design governance structures alongside the technical systems from the start, rather than treating governance as a problem to solve after the data infrastructure is already in place.