The European Union is racing to secure its medicines supply as negotiations on the Critical Medicines Act (CMA) accelerate — a shift Croatian MEP Tomislav Sokol said in the EU Perspectives podcast is now central to Europe’s industrial and geopolitical future. For Sokol, the stakes are clear: Europe has allowed its pharmaceutical base to erode and has become dangerously dependent on imports.
Europe’s reliance on Asia, he warns, is no longer sustainable. As he puts it, the bloc is “strongly dependent on imports from China and India, especially India, of antibiotics,” with active ingredients concentrated in just a few manufacturing sites abroad. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed this fragility; recent US industrial pressure has underscored it. “There is enormous pressure from the American government, especially from Trump, to invest in the US,” he says, noting that several companies have already signed “multi-billion-dollar contracts and commitments of investing into the US.”
For MEP Sokol, the question is one of sovereignty: “One [goal] is to strengthen strategic autonomy.” Europe, he argues, can no longer assume global supply chains will operate smoothly in times of crisis.
A new procurement model
At the heart of the CMA is a change to how public authorities buy medicines. Mr Sokol explains that the traditional model — in which the cheapest price wins — has left Europe exposed. The act aims to reward companies that manufacture in Europe rather than offshore. As he puts it, the proposal introduces a so-called “buy European” approach in which companies “who invest in Europe, who have production sites in Europe, will have priority in public procurement.”
This, the lawmaker argues, is not protectionism but necessity: without incentives, Europe cannot expect industry to maintain production capacity on the continent.
Supporting smaller member states
The act also strengthens joint procurement — a mechanism Mr Sokol says is crucial for countries with limited bargaining power. “Big member states have a strong bargaining position… small member states are left behind and excluded,” he notes, adding that they often “have to wait so long for medicines.” By allowing groups of countries to negotiate together, the CMA aims to prevent smaller markets from being last in line when new products arrive.
Managing shortages across borders
A third component of the act is the redistribution of stockpiles, allowing the EU to re-route medicines where they are needed most. He describes the problem bluntly: “You have a shortage in the Czech Republic, Croatia, Bulgaria, and then in Germany and France you have stock. If you put all member states on the same footing and ensue equal access, that improves the situation.”
The CMA would allow the EU to intervene and facilitate reallocation, a move he frames as essential to fairness inside the single market. If the EU is built on solidarity, he argues, then access to essential medicines cannot depend on a country’s size or purchasing power. The goal is to avoid creating, as he puts it, “first-class and second-class citizens” in access to treatments.
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A geopolitical turning point
The MEP repeatedly stresses that the CMA is not just a health policy but a competitive necessity. Clearly, Europe is operating under far sharper global pressure than in previous decades. The CMA, he says, is the bloc’s attempt to protect its long-term capacity to produce medicines and active ingredients.
He and proponents argue that the act is about shoring up the European pharmaceutical industry while ensuring that patients across Europe, regardless of where they live, have access to the medicines they need.
