The president of the World Health Summit in Berlin called national control over health policy a “political virus.” Prof Dr Axel R. Pries made the remark in an interview with Euronews at the summit, where he urged Europe to take a leading role in a multilateral health order built on the EU framework.
Pries, a physician and physiologist who previously served as dean and board member of Charité, has led the World Health Summit for six years. He first used the phrase about six months ago, at the World Health Summit Regional Meeting in Nairobi in April 2026. “We don't have the virus, but we have a political virus,” he said then. He explained: “We are dealing with a global situation in which many countries are looking at health increasingly from a very national, sometimes even nationalist perspective.” In his view, that perspective is spreading across the whole world and stands in the way of good solutions.
Who Decides Health Policy?
His argument is plain. Pries wants “multilateral mechanisms” revived and given “fresh momentum.” He wants countries to agree on common strategies, ideally under the WHO umbrella. “No country today can produce medicines or vaccines entirely on its own,” he said.
He went further, spelling out how decisions should take shape. The only way to create fair conditions, he said, is “an overarching framework the WHO can implement.” He would welcome WHO reform. But it shouldn't, he said, come under the influence of the idea that multilateral structures are no longer wanted.
The base article doesn't explain what such a framework would mean for national parliaments’ power to set their own health rules. It doesn't identify who would have the authority to enforce it. The man calling for the framework leaves those questions open.
Berlin's Own Law Still in Draft
Germany is preparing its own legislation. Officials expect to discuss a draft German Health Security Act in early 2027, next year. Pries called it an important step toward pandemic preparedness. Then he set a limit: health issues, he said, can only be solved through multilateral partnership.
So he welcomes the national law, but only as one part of a wider structure. Germany, as Europe's largest economy, can assume a certain leadership role, Pries said, “but only as part of a wider ensemble” with others such as France and the United Kingdom. He cited Denmark and Novo as examples of large European companies.
The Washington Question
Pries also addressed the US partial withdrawal from global health policy. “I would not say that Europe should be the leader,” he said. “But Europe should be one of the leading actors – and it absolutely has what it takes.” He pointed to Europe as a hub for medical innovation. Days ago, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to researchers from Berlin and Würzburg for work on optogenetics.
He criticised bilateral health-data agreements, a core element of the America First Global Health Strategy. “You can't claim on the one hand that you are always first and on the other that you are building partnerships,” he said. He also warned: “If we fail now to agree on common strategies, things will become very, very difficult.” Europe, he said, shouldn't allow strategic dependencies in health to emerge.
That point cuts in an instructive direction. Pries himself says dependencies are a danger. Yet the summit's answer is to pool decisions in a framework above the nation-state, not to keep them at home.
He closed with a slogan. “Global health is a team sport,” he said. “We do not want to face a Covid pandemic every five years.” He noted that the UN system’s last major reform came after the Second World War. He said he hoped multilateralism could be promoted this time “purely out of a sense of insight.”
The summit's own words frame national self-direction as an infection. The people who live under these health systems and pay for them weren't asked in this interview whether they agree.