From breakthrough to manufacturing: Europe’s biotech sector must build what it invents
By Jeannette Baljeu, Member of European Parliament for VVD, Renew Europe - Netherlands
The future of European biotech may be taking shape in a former factory in Delft. A familiar building to me. The site was once a production site of DSM and Gist-Brocades, industrial giants that played a major role in the Dutch economy. Its history is well-known in The Netherlands and especially in Delft, near my hometown Rotterdam. Businesses go through lifecycles and so did both mentioned companies. Their factories may be gone, but the innovation never left, I realize when I visited this now startup-site of DSM-firmenich. Today, this site is home to biotech start-ups developing everything from innovative proteins and biochemicals to next-generation medicines.
These technologies, shaping the coming decades, are being developed in European laboratories and incubators today. Europe has the scientists, the talent and the research institutions. The challenge lies elsewhere.
I have experienced too often that promising European biotech companies reach the point where they need larger investments, faster approvals and industrial scale, only to discover that the grass is greener in China or the United States. And so they move on, a step forward for them but a loss for Europe.
And not only a loss for businesses, but also a loss of public money, as most of the inventions are facilitated in the beginning by research institutions partly financed by public money.
The numbers are difficult to ignore. Access to finance for scale-up funding in the EU remains more limited than in other regions. US biopharma start-ups secured approximately nine times more late-stage funding than their EU counterparts.
Between 2015 and 2025, around 219 billion euros in venture capital was invested in health biotech in the US, compared to only 25 billion euros in the EU. Europe’s share of global clinical trials fell from 22 percent in 2013 to 12 percent in 2023, while China’s share more than tripled over the same period.
The problem is not a lack of innovation. The problem is that Europe still makes scaling up harder than it should be.
Part of the challenge is regulatory. Today, companies conducting multinational clinical trials often face a fragmented system with different procedures, timelines and requirements across Europe. A process that takes around 60 days in the United States and China takes an average of 113 days in Europe. In practice, every additional delay creates uncertainty for investors and founders deciding where to place the next factory, investment round or research facility. These are barriers Europe built itself.
Ecosystems like in the Netherlands and Denmark work, because knowledge, capital and entrepreneurship reinforce one another. At the same time, even strong national ecosystems eventually run into European limitations when scaling up. This is precisely why the European Commission’s proposed Biotech Act matters. It acknowledges where the real problem lies: Europe needs to be able to turn innovation into companies that can grow, attract investment and manufacture at scale.
The first proposal, focused primarily on health biotech, begins to address these barriers directly. Faster and more streamlined approval pathways for multinational clinical trials can cut unnecessary delays.
Regulatory sandboxes can help innovative technologies reach the market sooner. Strategic biotech projects can benefit from accelerated permitting.
Importantly, the proposed Health Biotechnology Investment Pilot with the European Investment Bank recognises another longstanding European weakness: access to late-stage financing, precisely the phase where many promising companies struggle most.
But Europe should not stop at health biotech. The next phase, the forthcoming Biotech Act II, will be just as important. Industrial biotech, advanced fermentation, biological crop protection, bio-based materials can strengthen Europe’s competitiveness as well as reduce dependence on fossil feedstocks or foreign supply chains. Yet the challenge remains strikingly familiar. A European company developing sustainable biological solutions should not still have to navigate 27 different systems before reaching the European market. Innovation does not stop at borders. Europe’s Single Market should truly behave as one and stop goldplating in national regulations.
In our discussions within the European Parliament I am looking for a more pragmatic approach. Legislation should ultimately be judged by outcomes, not ambition alone. The question is not whether Europe can produce excellent science. We already know that it can.
The real question is whether a biotech entrepreneur in Leiden, Leuven or Munich will face fewer barriers three years from now than they do today. Because we cannot afford to take these matters to a new political mandate, we must deal with it now. The task is making sure Europe becomes the place where those ideas scale up into industries, the likes of the old DSM and Gist-Brocades plants. This means that the European Parliament should embrace new technologies that will improve our lives and livelihoods. And we should encourage Member States to look at the bigger picture of a strong Europe with a true single market.
SOURCES:
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_25_3079
