Eastern countries seek EU help to catch up on the bioeconomy

As the European Commission prepares to update its bioeconomy strategy, Eastern European countries call for more support in developing bio-refineries on their territory and closing the gap with Western Europe.

The bioeconomy can be defined as the conversion of renewable resources – from agriculture, forests and seas, residues and waste – into foodstuffs, bio-based materials and energy.

The European Commission believes bio-based products and chemicals will be necessary to reduce fossil fuel use in industries like plastics and meet its climate objectives.

“The European Commission is working on an update of the EU’s bioeconomy strategy by the end of the mandate,” announced Peter Wehrheim, head of unit for bioeconomy and food systems at the European Commission’s research directorate.

The objective is to develop a sustainable bioeconomy across the 27 member states to contribute to achieving the EU’s 2030 decarbonisation targets, he told a Euractiv event on 30 November.

Competition in this sector is growing, with President Joe Biden in the US recently signing an executive order on biotechnology, biomanufacturing and the bioeconomy.

The challenge for the next European Commission that will be appointed after the June EU elections will be to harmonise development across all EU member states, which means speeding up its deployment in Eastern Europe, Wehrheim said.

Over the last ten years, more than €10 billion has been spent on research into the bioeconomy. However, less than 7% of the European framework programme for research in this field has been allocated to the EU’s 11 Eastern countries.

“We are lagging behind when it comes to research and innovation in the bioeconomy,” said Barna Kovács, secretary general of the BIOEAST initiative, which aims to promote research and innovation on the bioeconomy in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEEC).

“Existing biomass in Eastern Europe is exported as a raw material,” Kovács said. “It is not processed locally. We don’t have the capacity to do that. That’s where we need to focus in the future”.

For instance, Slovenia has no biorefineries to transform biomass into other useful products and chemicals.

“We produce a lot of wood, but we export it because we don’t have the capacity to exploit it in Slovenia,” said Simona Vrevc, agriculture counsellor at the country’s Permanent Representation to the EU in Brussels.

For this reason, Kovács calls for the research and innovation already produced in the western part of Europe to be transferred to Eastern Europe.

“We need to transfer knowledge and use that knowledge to be able to process biomass locally,” he insisted, saying this will improve Europe’s strategic autonomy.

An asset for rural areas

Among the strengths of the bioeconomy is its social and economic dimension.

“The bioeconomy is very important for maintaining dynamic rural areas; it helps to add value to biomass and residual products, but it also creates jobs in rural areas,” said Kristina Nordéus, agriculture counsellor at the Permanent Representation of Sweden to the EU.

Professor Justus Wesseler, a researcher at Wageningen University, agreed, saying, “Bio-refineries are located in rural areas and can offer an additional income opportunity” for farmers and foresters.

The researcher noted that in regions with bio-refineries, the level of per capita income is slightly higher than in other regions.

However, the increase in production of bio-based products also raises fears about the availability of land for growing food, which is limited in countries like Slovenia.

“If we stimulate the use of biomass in agriculture, will this impact food production?” asked Simona Vrevc.

The other concern concerns wood resources and the risk that forests will be harvested more frequently, putting them under greater pressure.

“If forest biomass is used in an uncontrolled way, the forest will of course tend to disappear,” warned Kristina Nordéus, who said the bioeconomy’s development in the 90s led to the introduction of stricter rules on the exploitation of forests in Sweden.

“We need to focus on this point when developing the bioeconomy, because if we use biomass in an unsustainable way, there will be nothing left for us to develop our bioeconomy,” she said.

Next steps

For Barna Kovács, a stronger involvement is needed at EU level to develop a sustainable bioeconomy strategy in countries that don’t have one.

For Professor Justus Wesseler, the priority is to encourage cooperation between companies active in this sector on a European scale. “Policymakers must take additional measures to simplify incentives for the private sector in the bioeconomy,” he suggested.

Looking forward, some are calling for the next EU executive to appoint a commissioner or high-level coordinator to develop the bioeconomy in Europe.

This was the suggestion put forward by Juliette Jacques, deputy director-general of Starch Europe, a trade group representing the interests of the starch industry in the EU.

> Watch the full video of the Euractiv event below:

This article follows the Euractiv-organised policy debate “Towards a sustainable future – What is the potential of the EU’s bioeconomy?“ supported by the European Bioeconomy Alliance (EUBA).

[Edited by Frédéric Simon/Alice Taylor]

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