From Washington to Athens: How the H-1B crackdown opens space for Greece in technology and biotechnology

The caller determination of the Trump medication to enforce a $100,000 interest for each H-1B visa exertion has sent shockwaves done India’s $283 cardinal IT manufacture while simultaneously creating a geoeconomic rift with planetary implications. Companies that relied connected the quality to deploy highly skilled quality superior to the US are present forced to readjust their operating models, strengthening offshore and nearshore centers successful alternate markets. Though presented arsenic a measurement to “protect American jobs,” successful world this determination is reshaping the planetary representation of talent and capital.

Europe, successful this caller context, gains an advantage. With much flexible visa regimes, mature technology ecosystems, and an intensified ambition for “digital sovereignty,” Germany, the Netherlands and Ireland are already moving to sorb talent being diverted from the US. For Greece, the infinitesimal presents a unique repositioning opportunity: strategic geography, competitory labour costs, and the footprint of caller anchor investments by Microsoft, Amazon and Pfizer together signifier a level to pull Global Capability Centers successful areas such arsenic IT, information management, and biotech innovation.

The existent question, however, is not conscionable however to pull talent, but however to link talent with superior and productivity. At the Bio3 Forum 2025, where I had the grant of chairing the roundtable “Fueling the Future: Capital Strategies for Biotech Growth,” it became wide that the transition into the caller biotech epoch requires not simply superior but besides public-private partnerships, organization support, and concern discipline. Yianos Kontopoulos (ATHEX) spoke astir the captious relation of superior markets, Antigoni Lymperopoulou (HDBI) astir the instruments of a sovereign fund-of-funds, Alex Tzoumas (Kos Biotech Partners) astir concern criteria successful beingness sciences, and Spyros Arsenis (NBG) astir the innovation support ecosystem.

The treatment highlighted the large challenges of the biotech “global reset”: skyrocketing R&D spending, stricter task selection, the extremity of the “easy IPO” era, and introduction into a signifier demanding acold much rigorous impervious and show benchmarks. In this environment, Greece indispensable show its credibility arsenic a reliable node successful the caller European biotech value chain.

The caller remarks by Bank of Greece Governor Yannis Stournaras underscore the hard truth of the equation: “There is nary wealth tree.” If wage increases are not matched by genuine productivity growth, the exemplary is unsustainable. The aforesaid applies to the innovative ecosystem: Without an effectual span from probe to market, and without incentives that heighten superior and labour productivity, the accidental will beryllium lost.

Greece faces a constrictive window of opportunity: to leverage the opening created by the H-1B crackdown, capitalize connected the momentum of planetary investments, and physique strong university-to-market linkages. With targeted incentives, fast-track visas for specialized personnel, RRF backing for R&D hubs, and wide branding arsenic a “smart, competitory and safe” ecosystem, the state tin pull flows of talent and superior that would different beryllium directed elsewhere.

The question is whether we will determination accelerated enough. In a world changing astatine such speed, the window will not stay unfastened for long.

Thanos Niforos is laminitis of Acacia Investor Relations, a strategic advisor connected superior markets and financing, and chaired the roundtable “Fueling the Future: Capital Strategies for Biotech Growth” astatine the Bio3 Forum 2025.