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Santé en Europe : droit fondamental ou business ? Des eurodéputés s'affrontent dans The Ring
Euronews Health Summit : Stine Bosse et Tilly Metz débattent de qui doit financer l'innovation européenne en santé
LIRE L’ARTICLE : http://fr.euronews.com/2026/03/19/sante-en-europe-droit-fondamental-ou-business-des-eurodeputes-saffrontent-dans-the-ring
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Euronews Health Summit : Stine Bosse et Tilly Metz débattent de qui doit financer l'innovation européenne en santé
LIRE L’ARTICLE : http://fr.euronews.com/2026/03/19/sante-en-europe-droit-fondamental-ou-business-des-eurodeputes-saffrontent-dans-the-ring
Abonnez-vous à notre chaine. Euronews est disponible sur Dailymotion en 12 langues
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NewsTranscription
00:00Sous-titrage Société Radio-Canada
00:30And who should pay?
00:32Europe is facing spiraling healthcare costs driven by an aging population and chronic diseases.
00:39At the same time, demand for new treatments is growing, raising crucial questions.
00:44Who should pay for healthcare innovation and to what extent is health treated as a business?
00:50One key pressure point is the cost of new drugs and vaccines.
00:54Should the EU coordinate pricing for essential medicines to ensure equal access across member states
01:00while also having tools to intervene in production and distribution during crises?
01:05Or should pricing and supply remain a national responsibility to prevent straining healthcare budgets and weakening market incentives?
01:14Tax debates in the pharmaceutical sector further highlight concerns about how much the industry should profit from public investment.
01:21Europe also faces longer-term challenges.
01:25Its healthcare system spends far more on treatment than prevention.
01:29The real question is not only how Europe will pay for healthcare,
01:33but what kind of healthcare system it ultimately wants to protect.
01:38Let's meet our panelists.
01:41Tilly Metz, a Luxembourgish MEP from the Greens European Free Alliance Group.
01:47She has been a member of the European Parliament since 2018 and serves on the Committee on the Environment, Public
01:53Health and Food Safety.
01:55In debates on EU health policy, she has advocated for stronger European cooperation on public health and greater transparency in
02:03the pharmaceutical sector.
02:04We need a strong commitment to solidarity over privatization and to high-quality care over commercialization, she said.
02:13Stine Boss, a Danish MEP from the Liberal Renew Europe Group.
02:17Elected to the European Parliament in 2024, she works on economic and industry-related issues
02:23and has spoken about the importance of maintaining Europe's competitiveness and innovation capacity.
02:28In discussions about the pharmaceutical sector, she has emphasized the need to balance strong research incentives with sustainable healthcare systems.
02:36We must do much more, better and cheaper together, including by creating a single market for clinical trials
02:43and by taking more decisions at the European level, she said.
02:50Welcome. So lovely to have you with us here for this very special edition of The Ring.
02:55So the idea here, ladies, is to give our viewers back home a bit of a taste of what exactly
03:01you get up to inside that European Parliament chamber,
03:04here in Brussels and also in Strasbourg.
03:07Sometimes you fire questions at each other, sometimes it gets a little bit heated.
03:11Today, as you know, we're focusing on healthcare and the future of it right here in the European Union,
03:17and who, of course, should pay.
03:18So Tilly, if we can start with you on that very, very pertinent question,
03:22who should be paying for the future of healthcare in Europe?
03:25Should it be us, the patients? Should it be pharma, the governments, big tech?
03:29Yeah, but if we look what the situation is right now,
03:33we see there's a lot of public funding indeed going in research,
03:37but there's also the patient that is paying.
03:40So you could even say that the patient right now is paying twice.
03:43He is paying first with taxes, which go down to funds,
03:48and then he pays again a price at the pharmacy.
03:52So what we need for sure is at the EU level, but also at national level, more public investment.
03:59Well, it actually all connects, and I do agree that there is an issue on how do we look into
04:07the future?
04:08What is the construction?
04:09Is it all, you know, everybody has access to healthcare, or is it a different model?
04:15That has to be debated.
04:16But at the end of the day, it all starts and it all ends at the end of the day
04:21that we have a strong and competitive pharmaceutical sector,
04:24and then we can discuss who pays.
04:27And that's an important point, of course.
04:29Tillie Metz, if you look at the data,
04:32one in every two medicines, this is back 25 years ago,
04:35was invented or discovered right here in Europe.
04:38Now it's only one in six.
04:39What went wrong?
04:41Exactly.
04:42I mean, if we go more to privatization and more leaving all the leadership to the pharma industry,
04:48we see that it doesn't work.
04:50Indeed, we still have innovation in Europe.
04:52We still have, but we are not really scaling up.
04:55But if we look at innovation and there is no real added value for the patients,
05:00that's something we need to do better.
05:02So it's up to public authorities to take back their leadership and their responsibility.
05:09I mean, if we go more and more in private health care,
05:13there is a huge risk of even more commercialization of access to health care
05:19and of commodifying medicines and health care.
05:22Would you agree with that point, Senebos?
05:24Yes, I do agree, but I don't think that a strong pharmaceutical sector
05:29is the opposite of having a totally sane and fantastic health care sector as such.
05:36I think these two things go hand in hand.
05:39But that is, of course, a question of funding.
05:41First of all, importantly enough, funding for the pharmaceutical sector.
05:45And then, of course, who pays?
05:47Is it tax paid?
05:48Is it universal access to treatment and to medicines?
05:52Or is it a private sector that we see growing?
05:55And there, I think, we will have to face that there will be a blend.
05:59And I am a strong believer in a strong universal health care sector
06:06that makes sure that there is access for everybody.
06:09I mean, we know that the private sector and the objective of the private sector
06:14are not necessarily aligned with what is really the public health's need.
06:20But I agree, we need a strong pharma sector.
06:24We need to have manufacturing back in Europe.
06:27And we need to have the conditions.
06:29But the incentives for the pharma industry must not rely only on intellectual property rights.
06:37There are other models, other alternatives of incentives.
06:41There needs to be a better coordination from the public authority in order to make it more equal.
06:48And this issue of scaling up, how can we do better here?
06:51I mean, in Europe, we're great at research, we're great in the lab,
06:54but getting it to market then is always the big challenge.
06:56Yeah, and there I tend to disagree.
06:59So without letting go of the security level for our citizens,
07:04we should base much more on our EMA and less on our national entities.
07:11Because if you look at it, it is 578 days from the approval of a medicine in EMA,
07:21till it reaches the patient.
07:22And on the European Medicine Agency, we'll come back to that point.
07:25I didn't say that it should not be the European Medicine Agency.
07:28I'm very pro-European.
07:29On contrary, we need better cooperation between the member states,
07:33and that can only be done at European level.
07:36I mean, on that I agree with you.
07:38And is the European Union ready for the next big pandemic?
07:41Because we know it's coming.
07:42I mean, we remember those terrible days of COVID,
07:44and we're being warned that the next pandemic is around the corner.
07:47Sinebos, is the EU ready for this?
07:49No.
07:50I mean, we are more prepared than we were.
07:52I mean, we have learned.
07:54And the institutions are also now stronger,
07:57and health is a stronger issue.
08:00You know, the fact that we now have the health committee,
08:02and it's a full committee, and so on.
08:04All these things point in the right direction.
08:05But that's not reassuring our viewers, just having a committee.
08:07No, I agree.
08:09And here, I'm back to that.
08:11We need also a stronger collaboration between countries within the union.
08:17We need links also for ongoing health care,
08:20not only on the innovation side, but also on the delivery side,
08:24also between the hospitals.
08:26There's so many things that we can do a lot better and cheaper together
08:30if we work pan-European on these subjects.
08:34But I think one thing that we definitely learned from the pandemic
08:37is that we are over-reliant to the pharma industry.
08:41So we need the public sector to take more responsibilities again
08:45and to have a better coordination.
08:46To be too reliant to the pharma industry, I mean, that gives a lot of insecurities
08:52also regarding the supply chain, regarding the transparency on the real coast,
08:57on research and development.
08:59I mean, I'm not against a strong pharma industry,
09:02but we must definitely also consider to have a European infrastructure
09:07on research and on production also of medicine.
09:12And I think we need to be ambitious there in order not to be too reliant and dependent
09:17only on the private sector, where we all agree that they have different objectives
09:24and that is also perfectly okay.
09:26I mean, as I say, they are not necessarily aligned with what is really an added value of the medication.
09:32That's why there are certain sectors like the orphan medicines,
09:36but also the antibiotics, where the pharma industry is not really interested
09:41because it's not really financially interested.
09:44So the objectives are different, and that's why we need a stronger public leadership of public authorities.
09:50That's the view from Thierry Metz. Let's hear your view there.
09:52You might have recalled that I'm not a socialist,
09:55but I do have a lot of social responsibility within the way I think about our citizens.
10:02So I cannot see, Tilly, that we should go for a fantastic publicly owned pharmaceutical sector.
10:11I think we need a strong, privately owned, privately financed pharmaceutical sector
10:17who can see the benefits of staying in Europe, developing in Europe, and delivering in Europe.
10:22And we also, of course, want to hear from you.
10:24You can always write to us at TheRing at Eurinews.com.
10:27We'll come back to it.
10:28Okay.
10:32Now it is time for our viewers to get a real taste of Inside the Chamber,
10:36when MEPs actually fire questions at each other.
10:39So now I'd like you to start with your first question for Tilly Metz.
10:42Well, Tilly, I just want to know, how on earth are you going to make sure
10:48that we can be able from Europe to deliver the best, the newest medicines,
10:55the fastest to our citizens?
10:58What is your prescription for that?
11:01I think it's very clear that we need to give incentives to the pharma industry
11:06and, on the other hand, to have kind of safe net by a public infrastructure.
11:12In order to have innovation and to guarantee also accessibility to innovation to everybody,
11:19we need to put conditions on this public funding,
11:23and we need public authorities to play their role on asking accountability to the pharma industry
11:31and on asking transparency on the R&D costs, but also on how they develop their prices.
11:38I mean, as I said at the very beginning, it cannot be that the patient pays two times or three
11:44times,
11:45once by the data, once by the taxes that he pays, and then again a high price at the pharmacy.
11:52Are you satisfied with that answer or would you like to follow up?
11:55No, because I still see that there is a high risk with all your good ideas,
12:00some of them we can agree on, but there is a high risk that the pharmaceutical sector
12:04would look to other grounds and say, you know, it's much more attractive to us
12:09to develop and to invest in the U.S., for example, so bye-bye.
12:14Do you agree with the U.S. system where indeed the pharma industry wants to put very much higher prices?
12:22I mean, that's what they want, that's why they are attracted by the market in the U.S.
12:25Is that the model that we should aim at, where only an elite can offer treatment
12:31and have innovation access and innovative health care?
12:35No, I think we must definitely take our responsibility, and that is one of the lessons learned from the pandemic.
12:42And that is, Stina, that's what we are working on, the Critical Medicines Act.
12:46It's exactly what we are doing there.
12:48We are making that the EU takes more responsibility in coordination, what is critical medicine for the citizens
12:56and what is really also of an added value, and how we can bring back manufacturing again back to Europe.
13:03That's what we are working on, on the Critical Medicines Act.
13:06And our viewers can read more about that Critical Medicines Act on euronews.com.
13:09But now, Tilly Metz, it is time for you to address your very first question, to Stine Boss.
13:13Yeah, but my very first question, I said it already a little bit, is like, do you agree in order
13:19to have accessibility and affordability on medicine
13:22that we need to have more transparency on coast?
13:27And that is meaning when we give public funding to the pharma industry that we need to put conditions on
13:34this public funding.
13:36Conditions like supply chain, transparency on coast, etc.
13:42I think, first of all, and I will be repeating myself slightly, so bear with me.
13:46I think that it's the starting point will be that we have a strong pharmaceutical sector.
13:51And you might not agree.
13:52You think you jump right into it has to be state-owned and it has to be state-funded.
13:57I'm on another page there.
13:59Then, having said that, then I agree that there are areas, the Critical Medicines Act is a good example,
14:05but there are also other areas where we have to think differently, as Europeans, but also as countries.
14:12And that's why this thing about the nearly 600 days to approval, that we have to get out.
14:19We need to make sure that the country's level of approval is not there.
14:24It doesn't make any difference.
14:27And then, on top of that, if we say to ourselves that there's an 80% difference between the countries
14:32of the accessibility to medicines,
14:35of course that cannot be so.
14:37So we have a huge issue at our hands to level this out between countries and to protect our universal
14:44health care.
14:45But that is only protected if we have earnings.
14:49Earnings makes taxes.
14:51Taxes makes the money to actually finance health care.
14:55I know you had another long list of questions for each other, but we will have to wrap it there,
14:59because we've now heard from our MEPs, and I would really like to bring in another voice here.
15:08I would like to bring in the voice now of the head of AstraZeneca,
15:12the CEO and Executive Director, that's Pascal Sochiot.
15:15He recently said that the pharma industry in Europe will be reduced to a shadow of itself within 15 years.
15:22He said this due to two major threats facing the pharma industry.
15:26One, pharma companies are investing heavily in the US to avoid heavy taxes by the Trump administration.
15:32And, of course, the other elephant in the room, China, is, of course, the leader in generics
15:37and a major competitor when it comes to innovation medicines.
15:40So, Tilly Metz, I'm curious to hear your view here on the concerns of the industry and of the CEO
15:46there of AstraZeneca.
15:47First of all, what I want to correct, because it seems like I want 100% only state-owned pharma
15:55industry.
15:55That is wrong.
15:56I just want a safe net that is public in order to guarantee that we are not 100% lying.
16:04But the pharma industry has an important role to play.
16:09And I spoke about incentives.
16:10I'm just convinced, and we see it in the reality, if we are pragmatic, we see in the reality, leaving
16:17it all to the pharma industry,
16:19that the system doesn't work because we have shortage of medicine, etc., what I said before.
16:25But we need other incentives, like the subscription model, where you know, if you work on research, for example, on
16:31antibiotics,
16:32that you get the fixed amount of money in order to work on that.
16:37That is one model.
16:37Or a milestone model.
16:40And, Sinebos, if I can just bring you in here, I mean, is it scaremongering what he says there?
16:45Or would you agree with it?
16:46Because, I mean, you can steal the home of big pharma.
16:49And I think it's actually more serious than we can dream of.
16:52We are, and this is a little bit dramatic, but it's good on television, we are under attack.
16:58I mean, our pharmaceutical sector is under attack.
17:02This idea of the nation, most favored nation legislation that the administration in the U.S. put in place is
17:13really, really hammering us.
17:16And I'm not saying that we should give up, and I agree with you on the fact that there should
17:20be a basis coverage, obviously, for citizens in Europe, also regarding the safety of the approvals.
17:27But we have to understand that we must fight this with giving terms and conditions to our pharmaceutical sector that
17:36can compete with this, in my opinion, very mean model, and that we have to fight back.
17:42Would you agree with this, what she calls a very dramatic statement?
17:44Let's look what is at the center of our concerns.
17:48And I am allowing myself to say that it is different as a politician than from the pharma industry perspective.
17:54At the center of our concern is the patient.
17:57If you look at the situation of the patients in the United States, they are in a much worse health
18:03situation.
18:04If you look mental health, if you look obesity, if you look at a lot of diseases, suicide, everything, they
18:10are in a much worse case.
18:12What do I have from innovation if it's not accessible for the large public?
18:17And in innovation, we are not bad in Europe.
18:20It's in scaling up.
18:21It's in manufacturing where we are leaking.
18:23And we have a very fragmented market as well, Sinebos.
18:26Sure, we have this fragmented market.
18:28And we have really not a capital union, right?
18:31So we need also the fact that investors should have a much, or, yeah, investors and companies, much easier access
18:39to capital to make them stay here.
18:41We also have to face, Tilly, that no matter how we turn this around, there needs to be a strong
18:48sector here.
18:49We need to understand what the problem is for the sector, try and solve them, and then, of course, fight
18:55back to the U.S.
18:55Because I agree, even long liberty is much better in Europe.
18:59And we should not give up on these areas.
19:01But it's not on the contrary to have a strong sector.
19:05And then it comes back to the first question, who is paying?
19:08And there, I think there is a need for a truly and deep discussion on transparency, on how do we
19:16actually have fun.
19:17Because our model, look, our model is like 80% gets everything, right?
19:23We covered a lot of people.
19:25That's why we buy a lot of pharmaceutical products at a cheap price.
19:30In the U.S., not a lot of people are covered, so they pay much more per pill.
19:36So that makes it completely uncomparable.
19:39And that we have to sit down and really investigate and find out, also in the Biotech Act, how are
19:45we going to solve this?
19:46So you have a lot to do, ladies.
19:48But now it is time, in fact, for our next round.
20:00Now I'd like to bring in some figures.
20:02There is a big problem when it comes to Europeans having to wait for new medicines.
20:06The EU average is about 578 days.
20:10That's from approval to patient access.
20:13And it varies from country to country.
20:15Patients in some countries have to wait seven times longer than others.
20:20While the fastest is in Germany at 128 days, Portuguese patients wait the longest.
20:26So your reaction here to this inequality?
20:28Yeah, this is completely how it is.
20:32But of course there is an explanation.
20:35It's not because Portugal wants to have a longer period for the population.
20:41It's about finances.
20:42It's about can they afford it?
20:44And here we are, of course, entering into very, very difficult discussions because a country like Denmark, if you compare
20:51us to Bulgaria, to Romania, then we are in for big, you know, there's a big difference.
20:57And that we need to over time solve.
21:00But one of the ways to do it is to, again, what we can make better and cheaper together, we
21:05must, including the EMA, to save all the money in all the countries.
21:10And the irony is in Germany, 128 days, that's supposed to be quick.
21:14I mean, that's a matter of life and death if you have to wait that long for your pills.
21:16Yes, yes.
21:17Yeah, indeed.
21:18And what we need also is we need more cooperation in European procurement so that we do, that we buy
21:27together in order also with strict timeline and also with the security on the supply chain.
21:33So that's, again, we need to give more incentives.
21:36That is true.
21:37But that goes hands in hand with conditions of supply chain, et cetera.
21:42And we need, of course, on that I agree with Sinebos, we need also to keep the EMA, the European
21:48Medicines Agency, more human resources and more resources in general in order to be more efficient.
21:54And then that we need less and less also there to rely on national issues.
21:59And should there be an EU-wide pricing for essential medicines?
22:03I think at the end of the day, we will get into that area.
22:06Yeah, I don't see that we can avoid having some kind of, you know, more transparency and more central disgust
22:14pricing.
22:15Because now when you go to your doctor, sometimes they say, go to France, you can get to France.
22:18Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
22:18Yeah, yeah.
22:19That's why I say, but I had this conversation with, you can probably guess who it is, but it was
22:24a CEO of a large Danish pharmaceutical company.
22:27And I said to him, I don't worry when I go in a shop and I buy, like, say, H
22:33&M, and I buy something.
22:34And I can see the price in Sweden, in Germany, in France.
22:38I'm still happy paying with my, unfortunately, it's still Danish kroner.
22:43So I think we should be more transparent, we should be more bold together with the industry.
22:50And they are also, at least some of them, maturing in that direction, of course, also because of the big
22:57threat that we have just debated from the outside.
23:00Now, we definitely need to put public interest is definitely more important, especially in the health sector, than commercial interest.
23:07I mean, at the very end, the very famous company, pharma industry, that produced drugs in, in the last moment,
23:14the price was really increasing again.
23:16Why?
23:16All the research, all the A&D was done, so we need definitely transparency.
23:20And as I said, that goes hand in hand with also public funding.
23:25It's something we owe to the taxpayers, we owe to the citizens to ask for this transparency.
23:31And especially when we speak of a fundamental right, which is access to health care.
23:37Because as you said, twice, or three times, or four times already here in the program, consumers are paying twice.
23:42Patients are paying twice.
23:43This is a big problem.
23:44Well, I'm not sure I agree completely on the fact that people are paying twice.
23:50I agree that there is a debate on how can we make this more transparent.
23:54But to be honest, I mean, the pharmaceutical sector invests a lot, and they should.
24:00And I also agree that in some areas, they should also be held accountable.
24:04You know, if there is public money involved, yes, I agree on that.
24:09Should we speak about the benefits that we made for the COVID-19?
24:12Yes, but look, then on the other hand, of course, there is a large number of workplaces, innovation, attracting skilled
24:22people, and all this is also beneficial for Europe.
24:26It's not only, it's not a non-sum spill, you know, thing.
24:30We have to look at the total.
24:32And I think it is, it would be devastating if we lost the last industry, ladies and gentlemen, the last
24:39industry where we are still close to, not even, but close to on par with the U.S. and China.
24:47We lost the digital industry.
24:50So do we want in 10 years from now to have a pharmaceutical sector where we said that's history, it's
24:54gone?
24:55And on the digital industry, that's, of course, for another episode of The Ring.
24:58We'll have to wrap it up there because I would love to move on to the fifth and very last
25:02round of this very special edition of The Ring, which is focusing on the future of healthcare.
25:10Ladies, are you ready?
25:11Yeah, yeah.
25:12Excellent, because you need all your wits about you for this last segment because it's a little bit different.
25:17You only are allowed answer using yes or no.
25:21Does that sound good?
25:22That sounds good.
25:23Great, let's do it.
25:24Stine Boss, let's begin with you.
25:26Should the EU cap prices for essential medicines, yes or no?
25:35Can I have a yes, but?
25:37Very briefly.
25:38Yes, but it has to be limited to very, very special situations and very special medicines.
25:44Okay, let's see if you can do a yes or no here.
25:46Yes, it's a fundamental right.
25:48Access to fundamental medicines is a fundamental right.
25:51Another question coming for you both.
25:53Tilly, I will start with you.
25:54Should Brussels negotiate drug prices for all EU member states?
25:58I think that would be a strength if we do that.
26:00We saw the COVID-19 that negotiating together gives us more power.
26:05So, yes.
26:06So, that's a yes.
26:06What about you, yes or no on this one?
26:08Down the road, it will be a yes from me also.
26:12Should patients be waived during major health crises?
26:15Yeah, yeah, of course.
26:16I mean, the patients and this is the...
26:18You say yes, Stine?
26:18I say yes to the fact that you need, we need, we're politicians, we need to keep our main focus
26:25on the patients.
26:26No doubt about that.
26:27And now a question you're both going to love.
26:29Should medicines be the same price all across the European Union?
26:33That's a long way to go there, but that would be coherent if we listen to the European citizens that
26:40want more healthcare and also better coordinate.
26:42So, that's a big yes, a resounding yes.
26:44What about you?
26:44I mean, it goes hand in hand with what I just answered.
26:47So, if you have a procurement way down the road that is common European, then of course you also have
26:54a transparent common...
26:56And just finally, is the future of EU health and innovation bright?
27:01Yes.
27:02I'm a strong believer in the EU as such and of course also in this sector, but we have to
27:07get a lot of our act together.
27:08And what about you, yes or no?
27:09Bright future or not?
27:11Bright future, yes, because we should listen to the citizens and we should put more funding and not cut the
27:16funding.
27:17Yes, did you agree with anything you've heard?
27:18Yes, she said that we should waive the intellectual property rights during a pandemic.
27:22There you go.
27:23You see, it's here on the ring where we get people to talk, disagree and sometimes agree.
27:27Thank you so much.
27:28And a round of applause for our two MEPs on the ring, Stine Bosch and Tony Metz.
27:32Thank you.
27:37And thank you so much for tuning in.
27:39As always, we love to hear from you.
27:40Write to us at the ring at euronews.com and stay with us here on Euronews.
27:47Thank you.
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