'Consequentially the growing role of the EU in health policy is a ‘silent revolution’, expanding almost unnoticeably, despite limited legislative basis. In this thesis the increasing power for the EU with respect to health is questioned because health policy can have an important impact on fundamental rights. The relationship between health policy and fundamental rights is important as it is reciprocal and intrinsically connected. On the one hand health policy can impact fundamental rights and on the other hand breaches of fundamental rights can impact health. For instance if someone is tortured, this impacts the right not to be tortured but it usually also has enormous impact on physical and mental health. The other way around, for instance if the government orders quarantines because of a communicable disease, than this is a matter of health policy, but it also impacts the right to freedom and inviolability of the human body. Because of the reciprocal relationship between health policy and fundamental rights the choice was made for in this thesis to use fundamental rights as a legal ‘benchmark’ to analyze the legitimacy of EU health policy. The central question of the thesis is: What are the implications of the expansion of EU power in the field of human health in terms of its impact on fundamental rights?'