- The European Commission has published a Staff Working Document to promote policy debates and development in the Member States for building capacity for a better use of scientific knowledge in policymaking.
- The public launch event was supported by the participation of Director-General Stephen Quest (JRC) and Mario Nava (REFORM), Deputy-Director General Joanna Drake (RTD), key stakeholders in the EU Member States, including the Czech Presidency of the Council, and over 500 registered participants.
- The document lays out the rationale for building capacity for science for policy, identifies key challenges, lists good practice cases, and identifies a set of EU support instruments, resources and policy frameworks to help Member States.
Today’s policymakers face complex policy problems, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, the energy price crisis, the digital and green transition, or the use of artificial intelligence. The environment in which policymakers consider policy options has also become more complex, with increased polarisation in societies and the spread of mis- and disinformation.
Scientific knowledge can assume an important role in this context. Science can support policymakers in better understanding policy problems and develop and appraise available policy options while at the same time introducing facts and arguments into political debates.
Yet, mobilising and integrating scientific knowledge into policymaking remains a challenge, as the COVID-19 “stress test” of science-for-policy structures, processes, and practices revealed. In fact, in its recent communication on “early lessons from COVID-19”, the Commission remarks on the “uneven levels of research and advice in different Member States” and how this meant that “evidence was patchy, sometimes contradictory and often confusing as a result of different messaging in different Member States”.
It is against this background that the Directorates-General Joint Research Centre (DG JRC) and for Research and Innovation (DG RTD) have teamed up to produce a Staff Working Document on “Supporting and connecting policymaking in the Member States with scientific research” that was published on 25th October 2022. The Directorate-General Structural Reform Support (DG REFORM) joined the two services to provide wider political support to this document.
The Staff Working Document aims at promoting policy debates and development in the Member States in relation to building capacity for a better use of scientific knowledge in policymaking. For this, it lays out a rationale for building capacity, identifies key challenges to this, and points to a number of good practice cases at both the EU and Member State level. Lastly, the document also offers a wide range of EU support instruments and resources, as well as supportive EU policy frameworks, to address the challenges.
Commission staff working documents (SWD) are informative documents that provide the position from one or several Directorates-General of the Commission around a specific topic. The broad support across three different Commission’s services (DG JRC, DG RTD, and DG REFORM) to produce this SWD reflects the comprehensive approach required to promote reforms in both public administrations and research and innovation systems for better use of scientific knowledge in policymaking. This SWD is in line with other existing and upcoming policy initiatives and projects from the Commission aiming to help improve science-for-policy ecosystems across Europe.
Science and policy need to go hand in hand. Our analysis will help build bridges between the two and will hopefully stimulate debates in different EU countries
Scientific research contributes to addressing the world's most pressing challenges not only through innovation and technological advancements, but also by informing policymakers. Now more than ever it is crucial to strengthen the links between science and policymaking and enable researchers to actively engage with policy
The pandemic and the crisis triggered by Russia's attack against Ukraine showed that public administrations need specialised scientific advice to design more effective policies. We work with the Member States to strengthen their evidence-informed policymaking capacity
Please join the policy debate! You can send us your ideas and comments on the document, or even better, please consider writing a blog post for our community on how the science-for-policy capacity of both public administrations and science and innovation systems can be improved further and what specific challenges organisations at the science-policy interface encounter in your country.
The document is available below:
A summary presentation shown during the event can be downloaded below:
You may contact us via our functional mailbox: JRC-E4P-ECOSYSTEM@EC.EUROPA.EU
| Originally Published | Last Updated | 26 Oct 2022 | 10 Nov 2022 |
| Knowledge service | Metadata | Evidence-Informed Policy Making |