On 5 June 2025, BRILIAN celebrated its second policy meeting in Brussels, hosted by the European Bioeconomy Bureau and aligned with the European Green Week. This session, part of the European Commission’s ongoing consultation on the bioeconomy (closing 23 June), provided a key forum to reflect on how policy can accelerate the transition toward a sustainable, competitive bioeconomy in Europe.

BRILIAN welcome representatives from a wide range of organisations contributing to the future of the European bioeconomy, including: Foster Environment, FEAD, AJ, European Bioplastics, Revolve Media, Lykke Advice, Ukrainian Hub, as well as an assistant to Italian senators, facilitating a rich and focuses discussion on regulatory frameworks and market access for bio-based materials.

Highlights from the dialogue

🟢María Rincon Liévana from DEPT B.1 of DGENVI in the European Commission opened the floor by clarifying the goals of the upcoming Bioeconomy Strategy: not a legislative act, but a vision-setting communication from the Commission to Council and Parliament, laying out a potential pathway to future policies.

Key challenges identified include ensuring a steady feedstock supply, improving market access, and supporting start-ups in scaling up their industrial activities. The upcoming strategy aims to boost competitiveness, attract investment, and streamline procedures.

The strategy will be shaped by consultations running through July and released by year-end.

🟢Maider Gomez, our Project coordinator from CIRCE, introduced our three pilot initiatives in Spain, Denmark, and Italy, showing the potential of using by-products obtained from the processing and low valuable land to grow crops for biotech transformation into materials and chemicals.

🟢Her presentation was followed by Roberto Ferrigno, EBB Managing Director, who stressed the need for robust market policies to translate research investments into commercial success.

🟢David Newman, EBB Co-funder, and Paolo Campanella, FEAD Director, discussed the untapped potential of the waste sector as a supplier of feedstock for the bioeconomy. They highlighted the EU’s insufficient biowaste collection, largely due to missing targets and mandates, and pointed to Italy’s success driven by recycling goals se in 2006. They also addressed systemic challenges in Brussels, such as incineration incentives that hinder composting or other uses. Both called for policy reforms and market mechanisms to grow the biobased materials sector, which remains too marginal to attract major industrial investment.

The event concluded with a session that showcased four concrete examples of bioeconomy in action.

🟢Celia Cremin, from Foster Environment, presented a successful pilot increasing biowaste collection through targeted communication and compostable bags. Ana Carrasco, from Paturpat in Spain, highlighted starch recovery from potato processing for biopolymer production. Anni Simonsen, from Food & Bio Cluster Denmark, explained how Danish farmers are valorising seedcake into specialty products.

To close the session, Franz Kraus, from Novamont in Italy, described the use of marginal-land crops for bioplastics and pesticides. He pointed out that most of the compostable products mandated under the PPWR, such as sticky labels, are paper-based, offering little benefit to bioplastics producers, who are still seeing no real market development.

At BRILIAN, we are committed to promoting dialogue on how policy can drive a sustainable, competitive bioeconomy in Europe.