Why on earth doesn’t Europe have its own BIO?

As EuroBio, the premier life science event of France’s EU Presidency comes to a close in Paris, Eric Poincelet makes a plea for Europe to establish a permanent gathering to rival the annual get-together organised by the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) in the US.

Eric Poincelet, Commissioner General for the EuroBio meeting staged in Paris this week.

Why on earth don’t we understand the only way of making change happen in Europe is to follow the pioneering example of BIO in the US, and the strategy put in place by its President Carl Feldbaum, and Ray Briscuso its Executive Director?

With the BIO event as its flagship, and its outstanding development from fewer than 4,000 participants in New York in 1998 to over 20,000 a few years later, Carl and Ray managed to establish a powerhouse in Washington DC that has triggered the steady development of the US BioIndustry and US bioscience.

This policy has since been successfully pursued by BIO’s Jim Greenwood and Brent Erickson, who are now bringing the fast growing clean tech and other eco-industries into the BIO fold.

Why on earth don’t we get the backing from the European Commission to imitate BIO – forcing our divided European bioindustries to unite and speak with one voice – which is the only way to rationalise and acknowledge their inderdependence?

Why on Earth do the European Commission, Europe’s bioclusters, Europe’s larger companies, European Investors, European contract research organisations, European patient organisations, spend so few of their marketing euros in Europe and so many dollars at BIO – and in many instances to meet fellow Europeans?

And finally, why does Europe grow sugarbeet and other traditional crops and so little on growing genetically modified crops and encouraging the bioinnovation that could salvage, if not the Earth, then many ailing sectors, including the car industry?

One explanation may come from what my fellow EuroBio committee member Jonathan Knowles calls the Gulliver Syndrome: large entities and established leaders sometimes fear they may be bound and tied up by Lilliputians, who will outnumber them and act in an irresponsible manner.

Large entities fear that smaller ones might impose new regulatory, fiscal and intellectual property policies, which, while in the interests of the euro area, could increase the level of global competition. Lions hate cubs when they are not their own offspring.

This same Gulliver Syndrome may explain why, ten years after the first BIO meeting, the teenage European Life Sciences have not yet developed their own central hub to give them the visibility they have deserved for a long time.

Curiously, history shows that most barriers to European integration originate from the large, rather than the smaller nations. And the difficulty of creating a true European version of BIO today also originates almost exclusively from the leading bio countries that cherish and defend their home turf event.

All European stakeholders – including the Commission and the Parliament – need a major European gathering that meets the needs of the European Federation of Biotechnology, the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations, European Biopharmaceutical Enterprises, EuropaBio, the European Venture Capital Association, the European patients’ group for rare diseases EPPOSI, the European Molecular Biology Organisation, the European Science Foundation, the Young European Biotech Network, and also of the smaller strands of our scattered but dynamic European Bio Babel – including publicly-funded European Bioclusters.

I started to advocate the establishment of a European BIO in 2005 after directing [French biotech conferences] BioVision and BioSquare in the meshing of US and European life sciences.

Three years later, EuroBio, with the backing of France’s EU Presidency and the contribution of an eminent International Steering Committee, is the first proof of concept.

EuroBio’s mission is to facilitate, strengthen and monitor the evolution of Europe’s strategic biopharmaceutical and ecobiotech sectors that will be central to tomorrow’s leading economies. And it is also showcasing what Europeans can offer to their partners who are beginning to realise this is no longer the ‘Old Continent’, but that its dynamic and talented biotech offspring are only ten years younger than their American cousins.