Macron renews calls for French sovereignty in healthcare and industry

French President Emmanuel Macron, wearing a protective face mask, delivers a speech as he visits a site of pharmaceutical group Seqens, a global leader on the production of active pharmaceutical ingredients, to mobilize innovation and support the research on the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Villeneuve-la-Garenne, near Paris, France August 28, 2020. REUTERS/Christian Hartmann/Pool

French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday renewed his calls for France to have sovereignty in the areas of healthcare and industry, as the country steps up plans to deal with a likely second wave of the COVID-19 virus.

"We need to relocalise and re-create our capacity of production on our own territory. Healthcare and industrial sovereignty will be one of the key pillars of our economic recovery plan," Macron wrote on Twitter, as he visited a site of French pharmaceutical group Seqens.

French President Emmanuel Macron, wearing a protective face mask, visits a site of pharmaceutical group Seqens, a global leader on the production of active pharmaceutical ingredients, to mobilize innovation and support the research on the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Villeneuve-la-Garenne, near Paris, France August 28, 2020. REUTERS/Christian Hartmann/Pool

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Toby Chopra)