EU Needs to "Act Fast" to Restore Competitiveness of European Biotech

Trade association EuropaBio today called on EU decision-makers to implement bold policies to ensure that the European healthcare biotech sector retains its competitiveness on a global scale. These include supporting incremental innovations, attracting investments and reducing the administrative and regulatory burden on biotech companies.

The association made its comments at a conference at the European Parliament in Brussels called “The future of medicine: Towards an integrated EU policy approach for the pharmaceutical sector”, which explored the necessity for the EU to design a specific industrial policy for the pharmaceutical sector in Europe.

“We continue to see a concerning gap between the conditions for a thriving biotech industry in the rest of the world and ... the sector at European level," said EuropaBio’s Secretary General Nathalie Moll.

The association's Director for Healthcare Biotechnology, Miriam Gargesi, commented: “Biotech companies are facing challenges along five main stages: discovery, product development, manufacturing, access and continued development – which need to be addressed at a European level in a coordinated way. An excellent example of this can be seen in the decision of the UK government to appoint a Minister for Life Sciences in 2014, giving a strong signal to industry and investors".