Is the EU biotech averse?

Enterprise Europe, one of the many magazines emanating from the Brussels machine, rubs salt into the wounds in its latest issue with tales of cash being hard to find for biotech businesses.

"Like many new companies, biotech firms can face cash shortages. In the EU, the sector raises three or four times less venture capital and has access to four times less debt finance than in the US. However, the most critical financial period occurs not at the outset, but after a few years in the business cycle when the basic initial research has been completed and companies are looking to enter the wider testing phase. Just when they should be taking off, many appear to run out of money."

This comes from an article entitled Is biotechnology a business proposition? After a slow start, the article says, "there are now more companies, almost 2,000, in Europe than in the US. However, the European ones on average tend to be smaller, employ fewer people 94,000 against 172,000), invest less in R&D and generate only half the income (€19 billion) of those in the US (€42 billion)."

The EU isn't sitting on its hands, it says in the article. Brussels is looking into the regulatory regimes in Europe, for example. It also has a study underway "examining both the research and enterprise aspects of the emerging technology".

The idea of the study is to "evaluate the consequences, opportunities and challenges of modern biotechnology for Europe, taking account of its economic, social and environmental aspects". Brussels also hopes that the study will "increase public awareness and understanding of life sciences and biotechnology, ensuring that debate on the pros and cons of the technology are based on fact not fiction".