Seroba and BGV are proud to have led, along with Hadean, the development of Invest Europe’s position paper, refined and adopted through Invest Europe’s Biotech & Life Sciences Task Force.
As the voice of Europe’s private equity and venture capital (PE/VC) industry and their investors, Invest Europe is committed to ensuring that Europe’s frameworks empower our industry to support and scale the continent’s biotech and healthcare ecosystem, transforming world-class research into breakthrough innovation, new therapies, and high-value employment across Europe.
However, key reforms are essential to strengthen Europe’s competitiveness and strategic autonomy in this regard. Addressing the structural barriers that constrain this sector will be central to advancing Europe’s broader economic and industrial agenda. By unlocking the full potential of biotech and healthcare – one of Europe’s most strategic assets – we can ensure that the continent not only keeps pace with global competitors but leads in delivering innovation that drives prosperity, resilience, and better health for all.
Biotech and healthcare form a cornerstone of Europe’s economy and society, developing new therapeutics, vaccines, medical technologies, and diagnostics while generating nearly 10% of total PE/VC-supported jobs. This role is becoming increasingly important in light of global megatrends, such as demographic shifts and the rising burden of chronic diseases, which continue to drive demand for innovative healthcare solutions.
Yet, Europe’s current foundations of a globally competitive biotech and healthcare industry – a world- class research base, a maturing innovation ecosystem, and a growing cohort of entrepreneurial and industrial players – face pressure at home and rising competition abroad.
Early-stage venture fundraising has plummeted by over 80% from 2021 to 2022, remaining 46% below 2021 levels, while public funding commitments are 31% lower than in 2021, and investment into early- stage startups has dropped 66% since its peak, preventing startups and scaleups from accessing the financing they need to pursue high-risk R&D. These declines are compounded by fragmented regulation, lack of deep and integrated European capital markets, long and uncertain timelines to exits, and growing global headwinds that are reshaping investment flows – with Europe lagging behind other global economies, most notably the U.S., which are implementing protectionist policies and incentives luring capital and manufacturing capacity away from Europe. The consequences go far beyond economics. They affect Europe’s capacity to deliver healthcare innovation to citizens, and maintain sovereignty over technologies that will define the next era of industrial and strategic power.
From the perspective of Europe’s PE/VC industry – which plays a central role in financing, scaling, and supporting innovation-driven companies – these issues represent both a challenge and an opportunity. PE/VC is a key enabler of the biotech and healthcare sector: transforming research into investable businesses, bridging the gap between lab and market, and providing long-term strategic support to the companies that drive Europe’s economic growth and our health and industrial sovereignty. Yet the current environment continues to constrain that potential.
This paper outlines the key actions required to secure Europe’s biotech and healthcare future:
Structuring the financial ecosystem to unlock investment at all stages and from all sources
Ensuring public funding complements private capital
Promoting regulatory harmonization and enhancing efficiency
Creating a European end-user market for biotech and healthcare
Harnessing data and emerging technologies
Strengthening the entrepreneurial workforce
Europe has the talent, science, and ambition to lead globally in biotech and healthcare, but to turn that potential into long-term competitiveness, we need the right investment, regulatory, and market and innovation frameworks to match – if Europe seeks autonomy and competitiveness, it must be willing to value innovation accordingly. That means:
• Unlocking investment at every stage: building a deeper and more integrated European capital market that channels both public and private funds into early-stage and scaling biotech and healthcare companies. Pension funds, insurers, banks and sovereign investors must be part of the solution, alongside continued catalytic roles for the EIB and EIF.
• Smarter regulation for innovation: simplifying and harmonising rules across Europe to cut time-to-market, reduce uncertainty, and make long-term innovation investment more attractive. A single, predictable European framework, coupled with clearer governance and coordination, can turn regulation into a driver of competitiveness and trust.
• Creating a European end-user market for innovation: aligning pricing, reimbursement, and spending frameworks with Europe’s industrial and strategic objectives. Europe should provide smarter incentives for high-impact therapies, enforce timely market access decisions, and ensure that the rewards for innovation are not captured elsewhere.
• Empowering people and technology: attracting and retaining top talent through modern equity and mobility frameworks, and fully harnessing the power of data, AI, and emerging technologies as strategic assets for Europe’s health and competitiveness.
Europe’s future in biotech and healthcare will be defined not by its scientific potential alone, but its ability to turn that science into innovation, investment, and impact.
