This article analyses the EU regulatory efforts to create a European market for advanced therapy medicinal products. It focuses on the pitfalls of European regulatory intervention in a difficult market which is characterised by multiple, often contradictory stakeholder expectations, rapid scientific and technological change, and ethical diversity. It contends that while the Regulation on Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products was, in principle, equipped to address these challenges, its fundamental paradigms and choices, and its treatment of some of the dilemmas of the emerging technology market, undermined its ability to establish the balanced and sustainable market desired by the EU legislator.