Aligned with WBA policy & Copenhagen Declaration 2025
The World Bioeconomy Association (WBA) welcomes the preparation of the EU Biotech Act II as a critical opportunity to strengthen Europe’s competitiveness, sustainability and strategic autonomy.
WBA emphasises its concept of the bioeconomy as a holistic and systemic framework, where the sustainable use of biological resources is combined with circularity, biotechnology and innovation across value chains.
The bioeconomy should not be understood as a single sector, but as a systemic transformation connecting biological resources, biotechnology, industrial systems, circularity and societal resilience.In this approach, the bioeconomy is not limited to individual sectors, nor solely to the use of biological resources. Biotechnology also enables the utilisation of alternative and circular carbon sources, such as CO₂, alongside biomass, expanding the scope of sustainable production systems.
A future-oriented bioeconomy must integrate three interconnected dimensions: the sustainable management of biological resources, innovation through biotechnology and biomanufacturing, and the protection of ecological and societal systems.
Rather, the bioeconomy represents a transformation of the entire economic system towards sustainability, resource efficiency and resilience. It integrates biomass production, biodiversity, industrial processes and end-use applications into a coherent and globally relevant model.
Over the past year, the bioeconomy has gained increasing recognition at global level as a cornerstone of sustainable and competitive growth, including its emergence on the agendas of the G20 and international climate discussions such as COP.
However, progress has been uneven in a complex geopolitical landscape, highlighting the need for Europe to act decisively and move from political recognition to implementation and scale.
Beyond sustainability objectives, the bioeconomy is increasingly linked to resilience, strategic autonomy, food security, industrial competitiveness and supply-chain security.
Europe has long been a global leader in biotechnology research and innovation. However, this leadership is increasingly at risk due to persistent barriers in scaling, investment and industrial deployment.
At the same time, the bioeconomy is advancing rapidly across the globe. New and updated bioeconomy strategies are being developed in regions such as Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, including countries like Peru, Panama, Kenya, Oman and Singapore. These strategies reflect diverse national priorities, but increasingly adopt a systemic view of the bioeconomy, combining resource use, biotechnology, industrial development and sustainability objectives.
This global momentum reinforces the need for Europe to adopt a similarly comprehensive and forward-looking approach.
As highlighted in the Copenhagen Declaration 2025, the bioeconomy is entering a new phase — shifting from ambition to practical implementation, industrialisation and global competition.
The Biotech Act II must therefore ensure that Europe moves from:
The bioeconomy must be recognised as a core pillar of Europe’s industrial system, in line with a holistic bioeconomy concept that integrates sustainable biomass production, circular resource use, biotechnology and ecosystem services across sectors contributing to:
A competitive bioeconomy is essential not only for sustainability, but for Europe’s global economic position.
The bioeconomy and circular economy should not be viewed as separate or competing concepts, but as complementary foundations of a future regenerative economy.
The bioeconomy provides the renewable biological resource base needed to replace fossil-dependent systems, while circularity ensures efficient resource use, cascading value creation and minimisation of waste.
Without circularity, the bioeconomy risks becoming extractive biomass use. Without the bioeconomy, circularity lacks a renewable material foundation.
The transition towards a bioeconomy represents a new industrial transformation in which renewable carbon, biological systems, biotechnology and circular industrial models increasingly replace fossil-based production systems.
A central challenge remains Europe’s inability to translate innovation into industrial scale.
The Copenhagen Declaration and global policy discussions consistently identify key bottlenecks:
The Biotech Act II must directly address these systemic barriers.
WBA underlines that the current EU framing of biomanufacturing risks being too narrow if it is primarily linked to the use of biological resources.
Globally, biotechnology and biomanufacturing are increasingly understood as broad enabling platforms for innovation, industrial production and system transformation. They are not limited solely to biomass-based feedstocks, but include a wide range of technologies, processes and applications across sectors.
A narrow definition risks constraining innovation, limiting industrial development and weakening Europe’s global competitiveness.
Biomanufacturing should therefore be understood as the use of biological systems, organisms or derivatives thereof to produce goods and services at industrial and commercial scale. This includes not only biomass-based inputs, but also engineered biological systems and alternative carbon sources, reflecting global developments in biotechnology.
Europe must move from precaution-driven fragmentation to predictable and enabling regulation. This includes:
Scaling the bioeconomy requires a step-change in financing.
As emphasised in the Copenhagen Declaration, blended finance and investment mobilisation are critical to de-risk private capital and enable industrial growth.
Biomanufacturing must be treated as a strategic industrial capability. The EU should:
The transition to a bio-based economy requires stronger market pull. This includes:
In addition, emerging application areas such as biosecurity, resilience, sustainable food systems and strategic value chains should be recognised as important domains for the development of the industrial bioeconomy.
The bioeconomy is inherently global and cross-sectoral. The Biotech Act II should:
The Biotech Act II must be more than a sectoral initiative — it should be a transformative industrial policy framework for the European bioeconomy.
Europe has the scientific base, industrial capacity and natural resources to lead the global bioeconomy transition. However, without coordinated action on regulation, finance and market creation, this opportunity risks being lost.
In a rapidly evolving global landscape, where multiple regions are actively shaping their bioeconomy strategies and industrial capabilities, Europe cannot afford to fall behind.
Given the rapid pace of technological development, the framework should include a regular review mechanism to ensure its continued relevance and effectiveness.
The future bioeconomy must be economically viable, ecologically regenerative, technologically innovative and socially inclusive.
WBA calls on the European Commission to ensure that the Biotech Act II enables:
turning Europe’s bioeconomy from potential into global leadership in practice.
