Strategic Europeanisation. A “Context-driven” Approach of the Use of European Instruments in Digital Health Policies

The aim of this article is to explore how and why EU soft regulations affect member states’ digital health (‘eHealth’) policies. More precisely, this article focuses on changing domestic contexts to demonstrate how difficulties in national digital health initiatives may result in domestic actors using EU instruments with the purpose of moving their agenda forward (‘EU usage’ approach). Actors’ strategies and Europeanisation are analysed through four case studies detailing specific sequences of the development of digital health policies in Ireland and in Austria between 2000 and 2012. The results show that identical eHealth policy entrepreneurs used differently the EU when they were submitted to transformed domestic contexts, highlighting how varying contextual and individual resources affect Europeanisation processes.