Issue-based industry lobby organizations like EuropaBio, the self-styled “voice of the European biotechnology sector”1, have been remarkably successful in convincing the European Commission of the desirability of supporting certain potential economic growth sectors, in this case biotechnology. Policies promoting the spread of biotechnology are now at the centre of EU growth strategies. At the moment, EuropaBio’s main concern is to get a Commission proposal for a biotechnology Patenting Directive through the unpredictable European Parliament.
In both Jacques Delors’ seminal White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness and Employment (1993) and Jacques Santer’s Confidence Pact for Employment in Europe (1996), biotechnology is credited with the potential of creating millions of new jobs. However, this is a very shaky assumption which can be seriously challenged.2 Moreover, genetic manipulation carries unpredictable and potentially grave risks for the environment and human health.
EuropaBio was created in the fall of 1996 through the merger of the Senior Advisory Group on Biotechnology (SAGB) and the European Secretariat for National BioIndustry Associations (ESNBA). EuropaBio Chairman Jürgen Drews3 announced the merger at a Brussels conference4 with the greatest confidence: “From now on, we will speak with one strong voice when discussing with the EU and national politicians and legislators the need for a regulatory environment in which European industry can grow and expand”.5
EuropaBio is made up of some 500 companies, ranging from the largest bio-industry companies in Europe to national biotech federations representing small and medium-sized enterprises.
In contrast to widespread public scepticism and disapproval on the issue of biotechnology, the Commission has made its support of this potentially risky technology unmistakably clear. Industry shares none of the public doubts, and has worked in partnership with the Commission in order to formulate European biotechnology policies. EuropaBio’s predecessor, the Senior Advisory Group on Biotechnology, played an important role in this relationship. The SAGB was set up in 1989 in order “to provide a senior industrial forum for addressing policy issues affecting biotechnology in the European Community” and “to promote a supportive climate for biotechnology in Europe”.6 Today’s member companies include all of the major European multinationals interested in biotechnology, for example Bayer, BSN Danone, Ciba Geigy (Novartis), Monsanto Europe, Nestlé, Novo Nordisk, Rhône Poulenc, Solvay and Unilever.7
In the early years of its existence, the SAGB produced an impressive number of reports demanding a stronger role for biotechnology in the European Union’s policies for economic development, and in particular arguing for the deregulation of rules for genetic manipulation.8
These reports were accompanied by a succession of high-level meetings between the SAGB and EU institutions. Examples include a November 1992 meeting where senior SAGB delegates visited European Commissioner for Industrial Affairs Martin Bangemann and top Commission officials, including Commission secretary-general David Williamson and agreed on “the vital contribution of biotechnology to future European competitiveness”.9 In September of 1993, SAGB organized an Employment Roundtable in Brussels, sponsored by the Belgian Presidency of the European Union. This ‘Roundtable’, which brought together industrialists, trade unionists and civil servants, concluded that: “The key to long-term employment in the EC’s industrial and service sector lies in the global competitive strengths of European industries, which in turn depends on access to modern technologies. Among these technologies, biotechnology is particularly important, even if it cannot alone solve all of Europe’s competitiveness and employment problems”.10 The top priority of Roundtable members thus became the revision of EU regulations on the application of biotechnology.
It seems that the efforts of the European biotech industry were not in vain: in the early 1990s, the European Commission embarked upon a period of active promotion of biotechnology.
“In a new biotechnology initiative under the Transatlantic
Business Dialogue (TABD), the European and US bio-industries have
identified the agri-food sector as their initial target for discussions.
[...]
The participants, led by Unilever for Europe and Monsanto on the
US side, will seek to identify potential causes for trade difficulties
in the agri-food sector and propose ways to eliminate them”.11
The probable breakthrough for biotechnology as a major element in EU economic strategies was provided by the 1993 Delors White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness and Employment, in which then Commission President Jacques Delors extols biotechnology as “one of the most promising and crucial technologies for sustainable development in the next century”.12 Delors presents biotechnology as a major source of economic growth and employment in the next century. As Delors puts it, “the sectors with the greatest potential for the applications of biotechnology are amongst the most vigourous and competitive sectors in the Community with a long record of sustained growth, productivity increase, and highly competitive trade performance”.13
Delors described public concerns over the introduction of the new biotechnologies as “unfavourable factors”, and explained them away as “technology hostility and social inertia in respect to biotechnology” which “have been more pronounced in the Community in general than in the US or Japan”.14
The central position of biotechnology in the EU’s economic growth strategy was confirmed in the Confidence Pact for Employment in Europe, presented by Commission President Jacques Santer in June 1996. The Confidence Pact was formally adopted by the Florence European Council Summit of June 1996.
Although the Commission has always taken a very positive attitude towards the biotechnology sector, the European Parliament has adopted a much more nuanced position. In March 1995, the Parliament used its power of veto in the so-called co-decision procedure for the very first time by rejecting a Commission proposal for a Directive on the Patenting of Lifeforms.
Under heavy pressure from the biotech industry, the Commission has put forth a very similar new proposal for a Directive on the Patenting of Lifeforms in December 1995. The European Parliament will vote on this proposal in the course of 1997.
In 1997 the Parliament will also discuss Commission proposals for a revision of existing Directives governing the use of genetically manipulated organisms for industrial and agricultural applications.15
With these important decisions coming up soon in the European Parliament, Europabio has stepped up its lobbying activities towards the Parliament. The European Parliament/Industry dinner debates, co-organized by EuropaBio/SAGB and the European Parliament, are the most conspicuous evidence of these heightened efforts. The first of these debates, chaired by MEPs Renate Heinisch (Peoples’ Party for Europe) and Christof Tannert (European Socialist Party), were attended by MEPs and high-ranking EuropaBio/SAGB representatives.
According to EuropaBio/SAGB, “all participants recognized the need to ensure both a stable investment climate for European industry and a high level of patent protection [... and concluded that] effective patent protection is the key to investment research. We need it if we wish to progress”.16
In 1996 the European Commission has granted admission to the European market for genetically manipulated rapeseed, chicory, soybeans and maize. Although at first glance this appears to represent a great success for the biotech industry, it may in fact turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory. Market admissions, in particular for the Monsanto soybeans and the Novartis maize, were highly controversial and sparked public debate in virtually all EU member states. In response to public concerns about food safety, the European Parliament adopted a resolution in April 1997 demanding that the Commission suspend sales of genetically modified maize in the European Union pending further health and safety tests.17
As the biotech industry has very large financial interests at stake, it is to be expected that it will heavily lobby the European Parliament at least until it has voted on these issues.
“At a time when the European biotech sector is fighting
to maintain its competitive position, the regulatory situation
in the European Union seems to have taken a step backward towards
fragmented national markets. The ERT underscored this problem
in a meeting with Commission President Jacques Santer last month
when it questioned how companies can operate efficiently where
the EU may decide on a specific policy, but where individual member
states can impose their own – often contradictory –
controls. The recent example of genetically modified maize in
which an EU marketing authorization was rapidly followed by a
series of national measures restricting the marketing illustrates
this. EuropaBio will work closely with the EU and national authorities
to seek to find a solution.”18
1. European Bionews, Issue 10, November 1996. |back to text|
2. In response to a question by German Green member of the Bundestag Manuel Kiper in October 1995, the German Minister responsible for Research and Technology had to admit that most of the information concerning the economic development and status quo of biotechnology “is based on estimations” and that no “concrete statistical data are available”. According to German government figures, the German biotechnology sector was only good for some 2,000 new jobs per year since the mid-1980s, whereas half of these jobs were financed with public money. These figures cast serious doubts upon the claims of millions of new jobs by the European biotech sector in the coming decade. Source: Friends of the Earth Europe Biotech Mailout, Vol. 2, Issue 1, 1 February 1996. |back to text|
3. President of International Research at Hoffman-La Roche. |back to text|
4. The Club de Bruxelles conference The Future of Biotechnologies in Europe: From Research and Development to Industrial Competitiveness, 26-27 September 1996. |back to text|
5. European Bionews, Issue 10, November 1996. |back to text|
6. European Bionews, Special Issue, December 1993. |back to text|
7. Other founding members were Akzo Pharma, Dupont, Eli Lilly, Ferruzi Group, Gist-Brocades, Hoechst, Hoffmann-La Roche, ICI, Sandoz, Schering and Smith Kline Beecham. |back to text|
8. SAGB report titles included: Community Policy for Biotechnology: Priorities and Actions (January 1990), Economic Benefits & European Competitiveness (July 1990), Creation of a Community Task Force and Independent Consultative Body (October 1990) and Benefits & Priorities for the Environment (November 1991). |back to text|
9. European Bionews, Issue 2, May 1994. |back to text|
10. European Bionews, Issue 5, November 1995. |back to text|
11. European Bionews, Issue 11, March 1997. |back to text|
12. Jacques Delors, White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness and Employment, 1993. |back to text|
13. Ibid. |back to text|
14. Ibid. |back to text|
15. Directives 90/219/EEC and 90/220/EEC. |back to text|
16. European Bionews, Issue 9, July 1996. |back to text|
17. In response to this resolution, a Commission spokeperson came forward with the weak excuse that the EC has no legal powers to withdraw its own market admission. |back to text|
18. European Bionews, Issue 11, March 1997. |back to text|