Europe has its own bioindustry and bioscience. Now it has its own bio-event, and you are an active participant…

This year and every year, European Industry & Science will speak through EuroBiO. It will speak to the decision-makers who want to hear, see and manage Europe’s future. It will speak to the media who want to know more … It will speak to rule-makers and administrators who want to understand the impact that regulations have… Through EuroBiO, it will speak to the funders of science and to the funders of industry, recognizing that they are crucial to achieving Europe’s potential in this field.

This is the right time for a pan-bioindustry meeting in Europe. None of the national markets are as big as they can be but Europe, taken as a whole, already has over 2,000 companies and well over 100,000 people working in them; Europe has a substantial base in R&D and is devoting more and more resources to the ‘Knowledge based Bio-Economy’. It is the largest economy in the world, and parts of it grow at double-digit rates… Europe has massive needs and massive strengths and a huge determination to succeed
both as an economic power and a good global citizen…

Europe has its own bioindustry and bioscience. It MUST have its own voice for the sake of better visibility and greater implementation in these strategic, fast maturing sectors.

What Europeans want from bioscience is not the same as what North Americans or Asians want. Public sector healthcare systems, social attitudes, value-added employment, and taxation: all the macro-economic factors reflect different desires. And it is clear that European attitudes to GM foods, regenerative medicine, and clean biochemistry – to name just three outputs from the biosector - are driven by a different set of values. Our North American and Asian partners will articulate their positions and support their actions, and Europe must do the same.

The bioindustry has already produced many substantial gains: effective products that address major diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and cancer; microbial and enzyme solutions to heavy metal pollution and industrial processing; crops that reduce intensive inputs of chemicals and energy. But this is really only the start. The real revolution ahead lies in predictive and preventative medicine, in tissue and cell replacement, in developing green biochemistry and production systems built on biology not on fossil fuel. The shape of the economy of the 21st Century is forming at an unprecedented speed, and what is done today will determine who will lead tomorrow.

We in Europe must face a politically inconvenient but exciting truth: we spend too much on subsidizing the production of crops and livestock and not enough on Research & Development. That imbalance must end. As the US swept all five science Nobel prizes in 2006, the Royal Swedish Academy of Science said that Europe should aim to match the US in discovery. Its permanent secretary,
Gunnar Oquist said: "I think it's up to the European politicians to think about this, and do something about it. Because it can be done.” We agree completely. It should be done; it can be done; it must be done and it will be done…

With Europe’s great multinational companies in the Life Sciences opening up to collaborations with small firms and public sector research, it is clear that these economic giants can help pilot Europe’s future. New industries are arising, stimulated by the reinvention within existing companies and stimulated by the public sector. Emerging regional clusters are turning the ‘old continent’ into a new, ‘rejuvenated’, competitive global player…

But EuroBiO is not only about high-level messages and goals. The meeting is also very much to do with people like you, working towards the achievement of these goals. With four thousand international delegates from Europe, North America and Asia, EuroBiO offers plenty of scope for behind-the-scenes deals that will powerfully dispel the notion that Europe has been left far behind, too slow, too conservative…

And remember: being in Ile-de-France means not only are you at the very heart of a truly international and wealthy economic cluster, you are also in Paris: so, add your voice, build the Future… but enjoy yourself at the same time.

You definitely deserve it!



Éric Poincelet, Commissioner General
& Stéphane Denépoux , Director of Programmes