The Economist and the myth of free access to research

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2018/09/15/european-countries-demand-that-publicly-funded-research-be-free

No publication is free. 

On the other hand, it seems rational that "publicly funded research should be available to all". But the issue is that the funding is not unique and I would find totally legitimate that US gov. restricts the access to US citizens. So "laissez-faire" is by far the best way and at the present time, a lot of papers can be accessed freely at least as the submitted word doc of the authors.