From the magazine
Counting on Europe
Bayer built the cell and gene therapy toolbox. Now Europe has to decide whether to pay for it.
Also open for trials
Ireland is opening its pharmacies to patients. Now it wants to open its trials to Europe. Holding the Presidency of the Council of the EU, Ireland has made clinical trials its first priority in Europe’s new Biotech Act, while, at home, standing up a new council to fix a research system that lags much of the Union.
Come in, we’re open
In almost every Irish town, the most trusted part of the health service is a high-street shop. Ireland is quietly making it the front line, letting pharmacists treat, prescribe and catch illness early. In a country with Europe’s healthiest people yet its longest hospital waits, senior pharmacist Tom Murray thinks this shopfront shows what modern care should look like, and increasingly the State agrees.
Running low
The European Medicines Agency assesses medicine shortages that affect, or could affect, more than one EU country. On 15 September 2026, its catalogue listed 29 ongoing shortage entries for human medicines, covering treatments from chemotherapy and insulin to a tuberculosis drug. Some shortages may ease as manufacturing recovers; others involve decisions to discontinue products or withdraw particular presentations. Europe’s Critical Medicines Act aims to strengthen supply, but cannot guarantee that every product stays on the market.
Can prevention pay?
Europe’s medicine keeps getting better, yet Europeans keep getting sicker, spending more of their lengthening lives unwell. Health futurist Bogi Eliasen says the fix is a mindset, not a budget, and sketches what a system built around prevention would look like.