Biotech Act, a Key Bridge to Food Innovation

As Europe seeks to strengthen its competitiveness, strategic autonomy and food security, biotechnology is emerging as a key driver of innovation and industrial growth. With global supply chains increasingly vulnerable and the production of essential inputs, including proteins, amino acids and vitamins, concentrated in a small number of third countries, the EU Biotech Act presents an important opportunity to strengthen Europe's resilience and unlock the potential of its biotechnology sector.

The EU Biotech Act aims to position Europe as a global leader in biotechnology by simplifying regulation, improving access to funding and strengthening industrial capacity. While particularly focused on health biotechnology, the initiative also raises important questions for food innovation, including novel foods, precision fermentation, biotechnology-enabled ingredients and sustainable production methods.

For SMEs in particular, the Biotech Act offers an opportunity to examine how the EU can create a more innovation-friendly ecosystem by aligning existing food regulatory frameworks with biotech innovation, reducing administrative burdens, approval times and costs, protecting proprietary data and facilitating market entry and scale-up.

Food innovation is an important dimension of biotechnology, reflecting its growing role in developing more sustainable, resilient and nutritious food systems. Strengthening fermentation facilities, biotech manufacturing capacity and supporting value chains is also essential to translating Europe's scientific strengths into secure and competitive production capacity.

Bringing together EU policymakers, industry representatives, SMEs and innovation stakeholders, this SME Connect event will explore how the Biotech Act can support food innovation, strengthen Europe's industrial competitiveness and create the right conditions for smaller businesses to grow and scale. The discussion will also examine how long-term investment and aligned regulatory and industrial policies can help ensure that SMEs remain at the heart of Europe's biotechnology ambitions.