A government official in France said on Thursday that it would be unacceptable for the French drug giant Sanofi to give the United States early access to any Covid-19 vaccine it develops, after comments by the company’s chief executive suggested that America would be first in line because it helped finance the research.

“For us, it would be unacceptable if another country had privileged access under a financial pretext,” Agnès Pannier-Runacher, the junior economy minister, told Sud Radio.

Paul Hudson, Sanofi’s chief executive, told Bloomberg News on Wednesday that “the U.S. government has the right to the largest pre-order because it’s invested in taking the risk.”

Sanofi has received $30 million from an office of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Mr. Hudson said.

“I’ve been campaigning in Europe to say the U.S. will get vaccines first,” he said. “That’s how it will be, because they’ve invested to try and protect their population, to restart their economy.”

Sanofi later said in a statement that it was “committed in these unprecedented circumstances to make our vaccine accessible to everyone,” and noted that it has manufacturing plants around the world.

The issue is a delicate one for President Emmanuel Macron of France, who has said repeatedly that Europe needs to develop its “economic sovereignty” to depend less on the United States and China for strategic technological and medical goods.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Édouard Philippe said on Twitter that“equal access to the vaccine for all is nonnegotiable.”

Dozens of current and former world leaders signed an open letter on Thursday urging that any coronavirus vaccine not be patented and be shared among all nations.