Portugal’s commitment to biotechnology in the context of European integration

Abstract

Nations at the fore of science and technology have adopted official policies to encourage new biotechnologies, especially from the 1970s on. They were spurred on by the idea that a technological system based on mechanical industries and vulnerable to the oil crisis was in decline. This article gives an overview of how this scientific-technological domain was implemented in Portugal at the end of the twentieth century. From the founding of the Portuguese Biotechnology Society (Sociedade Portuguesa de Biotecnologia) in 1981 to the adoption of the Lisbon Strategy in 2000, and thus encompassing Portugal’s accession to the then eec in 1986, the article describes how science and technology policies and European funding were channeled into biotechnology development. This process reveals fundamental features of how knowledge is currently produced and regulated in Portugal.