Developments around EU healthcare services law have been characterized by a puzzling phenomenon. Buzzing political activity in Brussels and member state officials vying to shape EU law in accordance with their respective preferences contrasts with minimal practical changes in national healthcare systems. In their article “Destabilization rights and restabilization politics: Policy and political reactions to European Union healthcare services law” published in the Journal of European Public Policy, Scott Greer and Simone Rauscher Singh explain this disjunction. Drawing on evidence from interviews with German and British public health officials, members of EU institutions and lobbyists, Scott and Simone show that the observed pattern of a broadening political activity at the European level and few actual changes on the ground is a consequence of policy-makers’ strategic choices. Given broad compliance with the patchy legal framework of EU healthcare law is costly for member states, healthcare policy-makers opt for the smallest possible change necessary to comply whenever a national practice is at odds with EU law. Relative to compliance, stepping up their political engagement at the European level to wrest back control over healthcare policy from EU institutions is far less costly for member states. Scott and Simone’s analysis shows that member states’ political engagement in Brussels does not necessarily imply their preference for European policies on healthcare services but “reflects states’ desire to restabilize healthcare law.”