In France (and probably the rest of the EU, at least the countries I visited) you cannot get antibiotics freely. They need to be prescribed by your MD. And usually generics.
Cost is 1€.
Whether they are prescribed correctly is another story (France used to be very into prescribing antibiotics for everything, this changed in the last 20 years)
Generics are generally pretty cheap. There are some indications that US doctors are incentivized to prescribe patented meds. I know I've received them when I strongly suspected a generic would have been fine.
>These analyses included several types of prescribing decisions, finding that physicians who received industry payments were more likely to prescribe drugs made by the companies that had paid them over alternatives, had higher prescribing costs, and prescribed relatively more brand-name products over generic alternatives. The positive results of these studies spanned a broad range of physician specialties and drug classes.
In France generics are compulsory (there are some exceptions), otherwise you have some problems with the reimbursement. This is not strong enough but at least this is something.
The pharmaceutics have to provide a generic if it exists, even if the prescription is for another drug (except if the MD explicitly states that the specific drug must be used, with an explanation and they have to report this)
Cost is 1€.
Whether they are prescribed correctly is another story (France used to be very into prescribing antibiotics for everything, this changed in the last 20 years)