NEW YORK — The president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, says Germany should seek a deal with the Trump administration to resolve their trade dispute over drug pricing. So my advice to anyone would be: Just try to find it,” she said in an exclusive interview with POLITICO on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Trade Representative is currently investigating Germany’s drug pricing policies, accusing it of “persistent underpayment” for pharmaceutical products.
In a hearing this week in Washington, a clear majority of witnesses supported this claim. The investigation could ultimately provide the legal justification for Trump to impose new tariffs on German exports. Metsola advocated for a compromise between Washington and Berlin to avoid “an impossible race on drugs.” Europe could “still lead in pharmaceuticals,” she said.
But the bloc has to become “much more agile, not only in pricing but also in terms of clinical trials and bringing new products on the market.” The center-right European People's Party politician, a member of the EU Parliament since 2013, serves in a role akin to that of the Speaker of the House in the U.S. While Metsola backed negotiations over confrontation with the Trump White House, she also sent a clear warning to the U.S. government, suggesting any tariff increase on German goods would potentially violate the 15% tariff ceiling agreed in the deal that President Donald Trump struck with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at his golf resort in Turnberry, Scotland, last year. Metsola pointed to a suspension clause the European Parliament had forced into the trade deal, warning that “there are legal consequences” if the Trump administration targets individual EU countries.
She repeated this warning regarding U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum derivatives. Under the Turnberry agreement, the U.S. must bring its high steel and aluminum derivative tariffs into line with a 15% tariff ceiling agreed to in Turnberry by the end of the year. Non-compliance by the U.S. side “would be a trigger alert” for the suspension clause, Metsola said.
In a speech on the sidelines of the assembly on Tuesday, the Maltese politician called for “guardrails” for artificial intelligence, a hot-button issue in Washington at the moment after leaders of top American AI firms called for a slowdown in development of some of the most cutting-edge technologies. Asked if regulating AI risked Europe losing the competition against the U.S. and China, Metsola said: “I remain convinced that the race is not between the EU and the U.S. It is between democratic AI and autocratic AI.
The EU and America have to be together in this race.” At the same time, Metsola rejected doubts about the bloc’s digital sovereignty. But U.S. tech depends on the EU market. This is what I think we don’t have in the conversation when tech leaders come to Europe and say: ‘We want to have a common market.’” European lawmakers from across the political spectrum are currently pushing to extend the EU’s cornerstone AI Act to cover liability for U.S. tech giants whose cutting-edge models threaten global safety .
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