Europe’s healthcare resilience depends less on buying European and more on buying better. Price-only procurement undermines innovation, outcomes and competitiveness. Revising EU procurement rules to prioritise quality and value would strengthen supply security, patient care and Europe’s medical technology industry.
The most pressing question in European healthcare procurement is not where our medical technologies are made. It is how we buy them.
That distinction matters because, over the next twelve months, the EU is preparing to spend enormous political capital on the first question and very little on the second. With the Critical Medicines Act now agreed, attention is turning to the Industrial Accelerator Act and the imminent revision of the Public Procurement Directives, both built around the same idea: that public buyers should favour European suppliers and European products. At more than €2.6 trillion a year, roughly 15 percent of EU GDP, public procurement is one of the last meaningful levers national governments still hold. Pulling it feels instinctive right now. In healthcare, however, pulling it without reforming what lies beneath will not deliver the resilience Europe is looking for.
