ABSTRACT

As the European Union’s EU integration deepens, when needed the EU takes the initiative widely in areas that it has no exclusive competence. Although the health is not an area that the EU has an exclusive competence, we see that the EU is getting interested in healt by the time and devolops many policies particularly in the aging European population and crossborder healthcare. Rare diseases are one of the health problems that affects a large population all over Europe and it’s difficult for countries to fight alone. In the recent years, as it is accepted that current managment method in the the rare diseases is a central approach, the EU has devoloped a policy that both strenghtens the countries one by one and gather them under the same roof to provide an accumulation of knowledge and experience. In this context of policy, the EU has come to a new stage in the area of rare diseases by establishing the European Reference Networks. When the establishment process is examined, it appears that the European Reference Networks is a typical example of the deepening of the EU’s health policy.