Bank of Greece Governor Yannis Stournaras spoke at the Biotechnology Conference in a discussion with Thanos Niforos, Ambassador & Mentor at BioInnovation Greece. He acknowledged that the country had made “great progress” in the digital transformation of the public sector. But the administrative burden and delays in the courts, he said, “continue to impose serious constraints”.
“For an investor, time is money, all the more so in biotechnology,” he said. In the US and China, applications for clinical trials are approved in about 60 days. In the EU, multinational trials take an average of 113 days. The most underrated advantage a country can offer, the governor said, is “the institutional assurance that [the investor] will not lose their money except as a result of their own financial decisions.”
The European gap
Europe’s problem is not research but its commercialisation, Mr Stournaras said:
- Europe produces about 21% of the leading publications in biotechnology, on a par with the US and China. Yet it attracts only about 7% of global venture capital in health biotech.
- From 2019 to 2025, 66 of the 67 EU biotech companies that went public chose a market outside the EU.
- The European Economic Area’s share of commercial clinical trials worldwide fell from 22% in 2013 to 12% in 2023.
The governor attributed the gap to weak capital markets. European households save about 15% of their income, but those savings mainly end up in deposits. The EU spends about €400bn, or 2.1% of GDP, on research and development. The US spends €1tn, or 3.3% of GDP. He described the integration of the Athens Stock Exchange into the Euronext ecosystem, as well as the Savings and Investments Union, as critical.
Productivity, not subsidies
For Greece, the top priority is stability and credibility, and “it is absolutely essential to safeguard what has been achieved”. The focus should then shift to two objectives. The first is to connect universities and businesses. The second is human capital, including bringing Greek scientists back from abroad.
Mr Stournaras made clear that a policy’s ambition is not judged by the size of its subsidies: “Productivity matters more than subsidies”. Success, he concluded, will be measured by whether biotech innovation translates into higher value-added exports and productivity growth.