Macron Backs Montenegro's EU Accession as France Becomes First in Europe to Reimburse Weight-Loss Drugs
Paris reaffirms support for Montenegro's 2028 accession target ahead of the Western Balkans Summit, while setting a European precedent on GLP-1 reimbursement
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This week
💊France first country in Europe to reimburse weight-loss drugs
🇲🇪Macron supports Montenegro’s EU Accession
💊France first country in Europe to reimburse weight-loss drugs
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Let’s start the week off with some interesting news: the French government has announced that it will begin reimbursing weight-loss drugs starting from 15 June.
Focusing on the weight-loss drugs Wegovy and Mounjaro, Health Minister Stéphanie Rist announced Thursday, making France the first EU country to cover GLP-1 receptor agonists under standard public health insurance on a permanent basis.
Reimbursement is formally set at 65% of the purchase price, though Rist said most patients will end up fully covered. “Officially, reimbursement will be set at 65%, but virtually all patients will be fully covered because they have comorbidities, such as hypertension or diabetes,” she told French television.
The drugs, produced by Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, work by mimicking the hormone GLP-1, which suppresses appetite. They have been available on prescription across France since 2024 and, since June 2025, can be prescribed by any generalist doctor rather than only specialists.
And the important thing to note about this is that, until now, patients have been paying around €300 per month out of pocket, a barrier that has kept the treatment out of reach for most citizens. As of late January, more than 70,000 patients are already on Mounjaro in France, despite the cost.
This will also become part of the wider French government’s strategy to ensure that the French population is as healthy as possible, not only for health reasons but also because it’s a genuine positive for the French economy, due to a hoped-for lessened strain on health services due to a lower obesity rate in France.
For example, around 18% of the French population, roughly 10 million people, are obese according to the 2024 national epidemiological survey. EU-wide, the European Parliament puts the figure at 17% obese and 51% overweight among adults aged 16 and above.
The reimbursement decision matters beyond France. GLP-1 drugs have remained out of reach for most patients across Europe, and Paris has now set a precedent our European colleagues will likely want to follow.
Public reimbursement of these new, novel drugs is what takes a drug from a luxury to a treatment, and France is taking the lead in making this happen.
🇲🇪Macron supports Montenegro’s EU Accession
Moving to the international stage: Emmanuel Macron received Montenegrin Prime Minister Milojko Spajić at the Élysée this Wednesday, using the meeting to reaffirm French backing for Montenegro’s EU accession bid ahead of the EU-Western Balkans Summit in Podgorica on 5 June, where Macron is also expected to attend.
“Montenegro can count on the full political support of France in the final stage of the negotiation process, and the preparation of the Treaty of Accession to the European Union,” Macron said, with both sides confirming the objective of closing all remaining negotiating chapters by the end of 2026.
Montenegran accession has a final target date of 2028.
Montenegro has 14 chapters provisionally closed and, by Podgorica’s own account, is the most advanced candidate in the Western Balkans field. Spajić was also scheduled to meet French parliamentarians during the Paris visit, signalling that the lobbying effort extends beyond the executive.
The accession treaty now being drafted would be the first of its kind in over a decade, a fact both sides flagged explicitly. The document is being prepared by an ad hoc working party, and its significance goes beyond Montenegro: it will effectively serve as the template for future accessions, including potentially Ukraine.
That context gives the Franco-Montenegrin exchange a weight beyond the bilateral. Rule of law, Spajić was careful to stress, remains an absolute priority for Podgorica, a nod to the conditionality that Brussels has consistently attached to Western Balkans progress.
Spajić also pushed back against any suggestion that Montenegro is seeking favourable treatment. “We are not seeking shortcuts, but fair recognition of our achievements, and everything we do is fully in line with the rules,” he said. It is the kind of statement that plays well in Brussels and Paris alike, where the political appetite for enlargement has returned, but the institutional caution has not entirely disappeared.
Macron described Montenegro as evidence that enlargement is possible and achievable, and said he was optimistic about the country’s trajectory. For France, the framing is deliberate. Macron has invested political capital in relaunching enlargement as a European strategic priority, and a Montenegrin accession by 2028 would be the most concrete vindication of that position yet.
It’s also important to remember enlargement is one of the EU’s most effective foreign policy tools, binding candidate states to Union norms long before they join and extending European influence outward in the process. Montenegro’s accession, if it proceeds on schedule, would demonstrate that the mechanism still works and send a strong signal to other accession countries, such as Ukraine and Moldova.
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I am going to Montenegro this summer. One of the few areas with Euro but outside of the Eurozone. When I was in Montenegro as a child in the 1990s, it was still Yugoslav Dinar and Deutschmark. Most people wanted Deutschmark instead of Dinar.
I remember also the referendum 20 years ago and separation from Serbia. One sad thing is that many Serbs still see Montenegro as something that should be "united" with Serbia again and not as a sovereign state.
I have written some texts in Swedish about the still ongoing identity-politics conflicts between Serbia and Montenegro that remind of the situation between Germany and Austria as during the 1930s.