Meeting with the Rhineland-Palatinate Minister Volkmar Wissing

The Rhineland-Palatinate Minister of Economic Affairs, Transport and Agriculture and Deputy Minister President, Volker Wissing, met with Claus Kremoser (Phenex Pharmaceuticals), Sierk Poetting (BioNTech) and Cay Frederic Horstmann (BIO Deutschland) in Mainz in December for an exchange on biotechnology. Sierk Poetting reported on the successful IPO of BioNTech on the U.S. technology exchange Nasdaq, explaining the factors that led to this success. Continuing this theme, Claus Kremoser, head of the Working Group on Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Jobs at BIO Deutschland, pointed out the deficiencies in Germany’s financing infrastructure that make such successes difficult. Society’s bias against technology and frequent lack of understanding for the processes and potential of biotechnological methods was also a topic of discussion. Volker Wissing was very responsive to the arguments and issues raised. He promised to keep the concerns of the biotechnology industry in mind and to work for the improvement of the general conditions at both state and federal level.