BioWorld International Correspondent

PARIS - European governments should formulate a more effective strategy for the biotechnology industry, taking global initiatives to encourage its development, the president of France Biotech, Philippe Pouletty, was to tell an opening session of the BIO 2002 conference in Toronto on Sunday.

Pouletty was scheduled to speak at the Global Biotechnology Forum, a roundtable devoted to a discussion of policy options for fostering the development of the industry in which he will share the platform with government ministers and other policy makers and corporate leaders from European and other countries.

"This is a great opportunity for us to reaffirm our determination to see France and the rest of Europe take vigorous measures to give Europe a strong and respected biotech industry," Pouletty said ahead of the conference. Since becoming president of France Biotech, the French industry association, Pouletty, who also is chairman of DrugAbuse Sciences Inc., of Paris and Los Altos, Calif., has campaigned for stronger government support for the industry, both at the national and the wider European level.

Pouletty told BioWorld International that having persuaded the French government to include several financial support measures for the biotech industry in the 2002 finance bill, he was now focusing on the European level, "because that is where things are going to happen in the coming years." Acknowledging that "slow progress" was being made at a national level, he warned that "Europe will lag behind the U.S. unless European governments make rapid and wide-ranging decisions." Those decisions needed to take account of the fact that "a successful biotech industry needs the mix of public incentives for research and a positive entrepreneurial environment."

Pouletty said he was optimistic that the necessary initiatives will be taken, since the European Union has set itself the objective of increasing spending on research to an average of 3 percent of gross domestic product (from 1.8 percent now) and that it has designated biotechnology as a priority sector in that regard.

"I think the European Commission is serious about wanting to make the European biotechnology industry a world force," he said.

To attain that 3 percent of GDP target for research spending, Pouletty said action had to be taken at two levels. First, there was a need to create an appropriate entrepreneurial climate for stimulating investment in high-tech sectors such as biotechnology. Second, public research budgets had to be boosted, especially those of academic institutions. Both national governments and the European Commission have roles to play in this respect, since the latter has its own research budget and provides funding for numerous scientific research projects (especially pan-European ones).

The specific requests of France Biotech are:

The European Union set a target of €5 billion (US$4.7 billion) for annual subsidies to private biotech companies in 2003, which, it said, would attract €5 billion to €10 billion in complementary private investments.

A new corporate entity, the "European Corporation for Innovation" (EUCI), be created for innovative and research-driven companies, which would enjoy significant tax exemptions and pay reduced social security charges.

The biotechnology research budgets of universities and colleges be doubled every five years and the quality and efficiency of research activities improved through exchanges of staff and cross-fertilization between laboratories.

And regulatory agencies set a target of six months for approving new drugs.

Pouletty said that the EUCI corporate form was designed for young companies that are less than 20 years old and are still at an innovative stage, as measured by their research and development spending. While Spain, Belgium and other EU countries were in favor of that idea, others, such as the United Kingdom and Ireland, were less enthusiastic, he said, since they were concerned about keeping control over fiscal policy. But Pouletty, who said the European Union should work toward the harmonization of tax rates and social security contributions, suggested that the EUCI could be a first step in this direction insofar as the same fiscal conditions would apply to companies throughout the EU.

Maintaining that the European Commission was "very receptive" to the proposals of French Biotech, Pouletty added that it was necessary also to mobilize individual member states for something to happen, saying that if the most important ones backed such initiatives, the others would follow. In addition, he said the European Commission should take a lead in preaching the merits of biotechnology to the general public, stressing the contribution of life sciences research in general and advances in genetic medicine in particular to improving and extending people's quality of life.