Bricolage or Entrepreneurship ?
is likely to precipitate objections from the Council ” ( Commission 1998 ). The Council of Ministers was indeed favoring the network approach , with three prominent advocates : Spain , Sweden , and the UK showing clear concerns over the financing arrangements for the system , and clear preferences to leave the operational costs of the network to be financed by member states themselves ( Council of the European Union 1997a ; 1997b ; 1997c ; 1997d ). This position was interpreted within the policy community as the reluctance of the EU ’ s member states to cede sovereignty over public health policy ( Butler 1998 ).
In the late 1990s the politics stream was thus more receptive to the idea of a network rather than the idea of an Agency . The role of increasing returns is probing : the decision to set up a network bares no additional costs economically and very little cost politically . However , the value acceptability argument shows that , at this moment , the politics stream was not fully “ ripe ” to the idea of a European agency . Nevertheless , this was subject to change in 2002 , with the European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection mentioning in a speech the ambition of setting up an agency , “ we have committed ourselves to creating a European Centre for Disease Control by 2005 . This will bring together the expertise in Member States and will act as a reference and coordination point both in routine and in crisis situations .” ( European Commission 2002 ).
A classic explanation of this change in preferences in the MSA is the renewal of the members of the Commission between . In 1999 the Santer / Marin
Commission ’ s mandate came to term and Pádraig Flynn was replaced by David Byrne as the European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection . The literature on the ECDC underlines the role of the severe acute respiratory syndrome ( SARS ) crisis in the Commission coming to terms with the idea of an Agency ( Greer 2012 ; Greer and Löblová 2016 ). However , the dates do not exactly addup . The SARS crisis began in November 2002 with an outbreak in southern China , while Commissioner Byrne mentioned the ECDC , for the first time , in September 2002 . In the member states corner as well , some receptivity is observable before SARS happened . As early as June 2001 , the possibility of a “ European Centre ” was mentioned in the conclusions of the European Council at Gothenburg ( European Commission 2003b ), where concerns about bioterrorism were specifically underlined .
The evolution of the politics stream ripeness shows that on the eve of the SARS crisis , policymakers were ripe to both ideas . This is due to the Commission and the Council are becoming ripe to the idea of a new agency , while , in the meantime , increasing returns of the network were consolidated and its proponents still vocal in the Council . The next part underlines the changing nature of the problem stream .
Ambiguity in the Problem Stream
The evolution of the problem stream , and the way problems have been perceived , can be used to understand how eventually conditions were framed in a way that opened a problem window .
The problem of disease prevention
56