We talked about it [common research policy] for years. Every Commissioner I knew made a proposal, but it was not until 2000 that it was finally understood the importance of research for resolving social problems like environment and energy. So it has to be the right time. If not, it is nice, it keeps people busy but it has no influence.
Hendrik Tent, senior official, DG RTD, oral history recording, 2011
The EU is a unique legal and political assembly of nation states, with all the unprecedented challenges and opportunities that such a position offers. This suggests to me there is something generally interesting about the EU’s pursuit of science (including, but not only research) – science that it has assiduously pursued since its foundation through both direct (or in-house) and indirect means (i.e., contracts entrusting the science to an outside body).
Yet, the complex bureaucratic history involved – alongside a vast amount of rhetoric and debate – defy easy summary (reflecting the intricate history of the EU itself). Simply for understanding, material is divided into three topics, namely: (1) European integration, with science configured as a shared social activity that will encourage it; (2) economic competitiveness of member states on the assumption that investment in R&D drives it; and (3) supporting regulatory and/or policy-making activities on assumption that better-informed officials make better decisions.
European integration
European integration, definition extremely vague, has had advocates going back to Rousseau & Bentham, and for all I know, long before that. It has obviously also been an important ethos for the EU; science and research has been one means to breathe life into it.
Examples of schemes in the sciences that set as their goal integration of one sort or another include ERASMUS, SOCRATES, and the researcher mobility scheme EURAXESS. These build on established norms of exchange of students and university academics but have no doubt increased the intensity of these exchanges between member states. Other notable schemes presumably along this line include the European Institute for Innovation & Technology (EIT), at the level of firms.
What can be said is that these schemes have contributed to a cadre of English-speaking technical experts, perhaps of liberal political views, able and willing to work across borders. The last Research Commissioner, Moedas, embodies this type of person, albeit at the most elite end of the spectrum.
The EU also pursues integrating schemes that seek to encourage national research funding agencies to work together, such as the European Research Area (ERA), ETP & ETIP (industry), ERA-NET, and SET-Plan (energy technology). These have perhaps been relatively unsuccessful in aligning research activities. As a guess, one explanation for patchy success might fall with juste retour, i.e., the idea that governments should get back exactly what they put in financially. The ideas of redistribution from richer to poorer member states (solidarity), or that returns might be non-financial, or less tangible, have not really taken hold. National funding agencies want to keep ‘their’ money within their own borders – herein lies the familiar tension between European and national.
Sometimes a distinction is made between the idea of the EU simply trying to coordinate science in the member states, an idea often linked to the research commissioner Dahrendorf; as opposed to the EU creating a genuinely European scientific program under its own control (idea sometimes linked to research commissioner Spinelli). One cannot say either approach has been particularly successfully or consistently applied; the first for the reasons above in that member states will not coordinate even when asked; the latter because it was actively resisted by member states. The Joint Research Centre (JRC) sits more with the Spinelli-type approach, and has therefore always been a bone of contention.
Spinelli’s strategy was federalist in this field too, aiming to make the Community assume immediately new competencies in those strategic fields of R&D where the pooling of resources appeared necessary for the competitiveness of the European economic system. On the other hand, Dahrendorf’s idea of the development of the scientific Europe was linked to a larger perspective and to a longer time scale. The first step had to be the establishment of contacts and links, which would create habits of collaboration at European level; the common scientific interests thus formed might lead later to the demand for new programs and institutions at Community level. We might say that Dahrendorf’s proposals delineated what we would now call a “networking” strategy.
Guzzetti, 1997, Developing the Bases for a Community Science and Technology Policy in the Early 70s, in: History of European Scientific & Technical Cooperation, p. 419
In general terms, scientific networking meets with less resistance while the more “expensive” industrial research needs larger political consensus and more favorable economic contingencies. The two strategies, however, are not contradictory and the two policies are not alternative. In the 80s and 90s they were both pursued for the development of fundamental research, on the one hand, and for the development of high technologies, on the other. The question which remains still unanswered regards the ways and means to organically link them.
It is useful, finally, to make a nice distinction in the integrating rhetoric – one aspect is an assertion of internationalism, that aspiration whereby all peoples of the world work as one. This aspect is not very important within the current EU, it seems to me, and is regrettably only harbored by a few idealists. A second aspect, more prominent, seems to assert the idea of European exceptionalism, Christendom, etc., i.e., that the member states should work only with one another (as legally enshrined in the Copenhagen criteria, & demonstrated with rejection of Morocco’s application to join the EC in 1986). Here, perhaps, the idea of European sovereignty, and the corollary, borrowed from the nation state, that its assertion relies in part on prowess in certain high tech sectors. ‘Digital sovereignty’ was, for example, an important rhetorical goal of the German EU Presidency in 2020; but it is not new.
Whatever the EEC is and whatever it is likely to become…no one will question that it is an industrial society. And presumably no industrial society…can be considered an independent and viable entity unless it possesses its own scientific and technical base.
New Scientist, 1973
Economic competitiveness of member states
This brings us to economic competitiveness of member states as a second goal; often very dominant in rhetoric because it appears pragmatic, built around the concept that member states, by cooperating, could somehow compete better. Economic competitiveness is typically raised as a quality the EU member states lack, or lack in sufficient quantity, in response to the défi Américain, Japonais, and Chinois (in ascending chronological order, with the latter two having regrettable racist undertones in some mouths). Accordingly, efforts to lift the innovative capacity of EU-based firms are duly required (highly successful, indeed globally hegemonic, European firms get left out of the rhetoric which is often one only of lacks).
As with all attempts to link taxpayer-funded research investment with economic impact, the line of sight is obscured. The cynic could say it is glorified state aid that keeps people with PhD degrees employed. The core argument for it derives from the claim, nebulous at best, that taxpayer investment acts a ‘force-multiplier’, due to the allegedly disproportionate impact of the innovation that derives from it.
At the EU level, at least one form of (relative) clarity has been found in the Framework Programme (FP), an enduring bureaucratic innovation of the Research Commissioner, Davignon, and his Director-General, Fasella, in the early 1980s. In essence, a packaging-up of all research budgets into one multipurpose fund:
Rejecting a linear interpretation of the process of technological innovation, the Commission wanted to create an organisation which reflected in its administration the complexity of the development process. From this point of view, the Framework Programme resembled a multi-dimensional matrix in which all the single programmes found different points of intersection with each other and with other Community policies. The importance of the system did not lie in the sum of the individual programmes, but rather in their interaction as they worked together towards the aims of Community policy in the fields of agriculture, industry, communications, etc…All the single programmes gathered together by the Framework Programme would be prepared and approved at the same time, guaranteeing their subsequent beneficial interaction.
Guzzetti, 1995, A Brief History of European Union Research Policy, p. 83
FP1 (1983) articulated six ‘thematic priorities’: agriculture, industrial competitiveness, raw materials, energy, development aid, and living conditions (p. 10, here). Thirty-seven years later, in the present, the planned new FP9 (‘Horizon Europe’) talks about five ‘missions’: adaptation to climate change, including societal transformation; cancer; healthy oceans and natural waters; carbon-neutral and smart cities; soil health for sustainable food (p. 6, here). Apart from the slight changes of terminology, there has been consistency in the rhetoric.
As can be seen from the table below, around €280b, or (on average) >€6.4b p.a., will have been spent by the end of the latest FP cycle in 2027 (budget yet to be approved). Caveats about the number not being inflation adjusted and so forth, but this all-time average amounts to a relatively small expenditure, compared to the reported R&D expenditure of the super-spenders of the private sector, namely, Amazon, Alphabet, VW, and Samsung.
Indeed, taking the long view, if the EU were a multinational firm, it would be among the R&D mid-rank, somewhere around the Celgene, GSK or BMW level. However, if we look only at the next few years of Horizon Europe, the EU is certainly pushing into the upper-end of the table alongside the super-spenders. Not a trivial amount – but not vast, either.
| Program | Year adopted | Budget €b |
| FP1 | 1983 | 3.75* |
| FP2 | 1987 | 5.4* |
| FP3 | 1990 | 5.7* |
| FP4 | 1994 | 11.625* |
| FP5 | 1998 | 13.7* |
| FP6 | 2002 | 16.3 |
| FP7 | 2006 | 50 |
| FP 8 (Horizon 2020) | 2013 | 77 |
| FP9 (Horizon Europe) | Not yet adopted | 100 |
Over the years, there has been a certain amount of tinkering with the details of governance and process of awarding money within the FP (including who advises on the awarding). The roles of academics, business people and European officials have perhaps fluctuated in their relative influence on certain funding decisions; has every combination been tried? An innovation: the European Defence Agency (EDA) is not currently a significant funding agency (having allocated only about €500m to 150 R&T projects since 2004), but it might become so.
Policy advisory services & regulation
Science to support policy development, above all regulation, is perhaps the least advertised of EU scientific activities. It has grown up around the bureaucracy over time, rather than being created in dramatic steps.
Regulation is obviously a major task of the European Commission. Any such agency needs its own analysis and knowledge system to support its decisions – outside actors with vested interests might mislead it with partial or false information. This is one of the reasons why countries invest in scientific activity, and, indeed, why there is a direct, transaction line between taxpayers’ money, and funding of scientific activities that protect taxpayers’ interests (such as consumer regulation). Looked at this way, science that supports regulation is of high worth because it directly serves the people – the core of public service.
Besides the scientific activities the core EU institutions (including the European Investment Bank, and the European Commission’s JRC – the latter discussed here) might produce themselves, or buy from outside bodies such as consultancy firms, the EU also harbors about 30 legally-established agencies. Most but not all are tasked to supply information to support policy development and/or make regulatory decisions; they therefore form an important nexus for scientific activity.
The agencies cover a large range of knowledge, but roughly in four categories of health & environment; economy; defense & security; and human rights. In 2018, the agencies comprised about €4.2b of expenditure (2.9% of the EU’s total budget) while employing 11,400 people (17% of total EU staffing).
EU agencies (classified by annual budget per agency)*
| Annual budget per agency | Agencies |
| >€1b | GSA, SRB |
| €100m-€1b | EMA, EIT, Frontex, EASA, Europol, ECHA, EMSA, EUIPO |
| €10m-€100m | eu-LISA, EASO, EFSA, ECDC, ESMA, CdT, EBA, Eurojust, ESA, EIPOA, FRA, Eurofound, ETF, Cedefop, EFCA, EMCDDA, EU-OSHA, CEPOL, ACER, REA, EACEA, ERCEA, EASME, INEA, CPVO, EDA |
| <€10m | ENISA, EIGE, BEREC Office, ESA, EUISS |
Many of the agencies are creations of the last 20 years, but not all (the oldest dates from the 1970s). They were established piecemeal in response to different policy drivers. It was (apparently) only in 2013 that a formal network of such agencies was established, known as the EU Agencies Network (EUAN). The particular sub-network for scientific activities is called the EU Agencies network for scientific advice (EU-ANSA). This network seems quite limited in what it aims to do, essentially, information exchange (holding meetings to share knowledge, as well as producing occasional reports).
Quoting at length comments by 10 members of EU-ANSA in a 2018 report on the topic of research:
Some agencies, particularly those whose core disciplines are within the social sciences and undertake large population-based analyses, apply their scientific findings to develop internally led research actions to address gaps within existing official EU statistical (e.g. Eurostat) and survey data. However, in most cases, agencies largely rely on externally supported research to address the identified research needs.
…patchy engagement [with the Commission] fails to fully mobilise and exploit the knowledge and expertise that exist in the agencies. As such, there is a potential to enhance the research knowledge cycle, by EU funders drawing more systematically on this knowledge and expertise. The challenge is therefore to develop corporate relationships and build mutual support and direct engagement between EU agencies, EU research funders and EU data providers.
An initial discussion indicated that there is variance in how agencies engage with, and are engaged by, EU research actors, and it also brought up some mixed experiences in supporting and guiding relevant EU-level research. Hence, it was agreed to further explore actions undertaken by EU agencies to support research and to foster engagement with research actors.
The report indeed suggests that these agencies are marginalized specifically in the research procurement process, with their staff seeing themselves not as research actors but as outside bodies that try to influence research being commissioned by DG Research (and other DG) or the JRC. (Where no laboratories or equipment are required, such as in the social sciences, there is, however, some limited ability to conduct their own research on the margins.)
Herein lies an interesting phenomenon – the deliberate bureaucratic splitting of science from research at the agency level. Logically, I would say the opposite should hold, with regulatory agencies deciding exactly what research gets done. The science needed to support regulation is clearly incomplete (take chemicals regulation as a glaring example), and only those who directly undertake regulation will know the gaps in their own knowledge.
Multinational firms, such as in the chemical industry, might not very much like the regulatory apparatus, and would not like it to be better informed. Or, perhaps, member states do not want a Commission that is better informed; certainly they have never really supported the Spinelli vision of a European-level science under the control of the EU itself.
Basic research
A final complication, which doesn’t seem to fit in the above – basic research, which might contribute to economic competitiveness in more diffuse ways such as supply of trained staff or new ideas – although, of course, the whole topic is deliberately defined according to its rhetorical disconnection from utility.
A Research Commissioner, Dahrendorf, captured the issue when he wrote:
Considering the particular nature of basic research, which needs to be supported and encouraged rather than organised and planned, and given that collaboration often extends beyond the confines of the European Community, we need to find at a Community level a satisfactory response to the problems which are posed by this type of research.
The current solution is the European Research Council (ERC). But as the recent resignation of the chair, Mauro Ferrari, showed, the tension between application-oriented research, and other ‘forms’ of research, has not disappeared. It is not so much a discussion of the value of basic research per se, but whether the EU should be involved in it, and to what extent.
My guess is that the ERC budget is small, relative to the totality of EU cash spent on R&D activities – primarily a university support scheme. It might be better structured explicitly as such, e.g., as a scheme to fund women at under-resourced universities and research institutes in the EU’s poorest regions.
Conclusion
Now some very preliminary discussion points based on incomplete reading & understanding of the topic.
European scientific activity has produced unique and demonstrable successes in integrating people in shared scientific activity across Europe – such as ERASMUS, SOCRATES, and so on. The creation of a European technical middle class is probably about the most interesting outcome of EU action. That said, there is little integration of national action beyond the direct spending of the European Commission. This is regrettable given one might say the prime task of the EU is to integrate economic, societal and other forces of Europe.
Turning to the impact of European science on competitiveness of the member states, there are a lot of evaluations but not much evidence the investments amounted to more than a hill of beans in terms of economic big pictures, which seems to me what really matters, e.g.:
- 1989 and all that – economic collapse of Eastern Europe; German reunification; capital and labor movements in/out of the new accession states
- 2008 and all that – Greek crisis, Brexit
What would be a reasonable expectation for the interaction of R&D with the above, if any? Regrettably, the data necessary for such determinations are hard to find. FP is seemingly built upon abstract if not nebulous qualities such as thematic priorities/missions which rarely align with events and trends on the ground. Indeed, a research policy explicitly designed and appraised on the basis of its interaction with actual events and trends would be an astonishing innovation.
Only recently has the EU boosted FP budgets sufficiently to place it on par with R&D in the private sector. On a narrowly financial basis, if the EU intends to take on the big non-European corporations, and win, let’s take a wild stab and say it would need to spend an order of magnitude more on R&D than the super-spenders – Amazon, et al. – combined. By that I mean €100b+ p.a., which would ensure the European Commission had the capacity to act on behalf of citizens in a manner few taxpayer-funded entities can achieve.
Presumably, it would be very hard to justify such vast investment, as the money would probably be more effectively spent elsewhere (such as alleviating poverty) – although that consideration never stopped the ECB asset purchase program which is, indeed, of the order of €trillions. Perhaps legal and regulatory measures will remain the most useful approach to the competitiveness issue, given the EU is not currently capable of outspending its competitors on R&D.
While admitting that links between R&D expenditure by the EU, and the economic competitiveness of its member states, are probably often destined to be no more than rhetoric, the rhetoric does appear to have done political work – attracting greater volumes of taxpayer investment towards R&D and making what is actually very obscure expenditure politically palatable to the European Parliament.
Turning, finally, to science that informs policy, the EU has developed independent capacity of its own to support its often laudable regulatory activities – a genuinely European kind of science (c.f. Spinelli’s ideas). But these scientific capacities appear weak and underappreciated. Beyond the limited efforts by EU-ANSA, the pursuit of science to support policy activities seems very far from being a coordinated, politically-coherent enterprise. Splitting scientific needs in the EU agencies from research commissioning capacity in the Commission and JRC seems sub-optimal and might benefit from reform (particularly if one was looking to find some new approaches to regulation).
It is also worth noting how under-powered the EU’s expert capacity looks – c.f., expert capacity of the US Federal government – just a single agency, the CDC, had an allocation of around €6b-€7b (2018). In this regard, the EU very much bobs in the wake of its alleged strategic competitors when it comes to fielding expertise.
The interesting question to ask is the extent to which a more ‘federal’ Europe means more centralization, or indeed less centralization – in other words, the dynamic between the central expertise of the agencies, and the member states’ own agencies, research commissioning in the member states, and so forth. Crudely put, how does central and devolved expertise interact in the German Federal state, c.f. the French centralized state – and to what extent these two ‘models’ play out at the European level. I regret to say I lack the knowledge to give an answer, but suggest it is an important additional dynamic to watch.
Perhaps fair assessment of the overall efficacy of scientific activities (taking place in the EU institutions, or commissioned by them) need to be made against the three goals outlined above, with the inevitable subjectivity these bring. Such assessments are rarely done. But let us attempt one, by saying that the EU has been relatively successful at using science as an integrating tool; an (inevitable) failure at economic competitiveness despite talking about it without respite (way too little cash, for starters); and it could do a lot more on regulation (easy ‘wins’ beckon here).
Research Commissioners
| Name | Nationality | Background | Political affiliation | Tenure |
| Enrico Medi (1) | IT | Physicist | n.d. | n.d. |
| Paul De Groóte (1) | BE | Engineer; colonial administrator | n.d | n.d. |
| Fritz Hellwig (2, 3) | DE | Historian | Christian Democrat | 1967-1970 |
| Guido Colonna di Paliano (2, 3) | IT | Lawyer; diplomat | n.d. | n.d. |
| Altiero Spinelli | IT | Journalist; political theorist | Communist | 1970-1976 |
| Ralf Dahrendorf | DE | Political scientist; academic | Liberal | 1973-1977 |
| Guido Brunner | DE | Lawyer; diplomat | Liberal | 1977-1981 |
| Count Étienne Davignon | BE | Lawyer; civil servant | n.d. | 1981-1985 |
| Karl-Heinz Narjes | DE | Lawyer | Christian Democrat | 1985-1988 |
| Filippo Maria Pandolfi | IT | Philosopher; politician | Christian Democrat | 1989-1993 |
| Antonio Ruberti (4) | IT | Engineer; academic | n.d. | 1993-1995 |
| Martin Bangemann (4) | DE | Lawyer | Liberal | 1993-1995 |
| Édith Cresson | FR | Economist; prime minister | Socialist | 1995-1999 |
| Philippe Busquin | BE | Physicist; politician | Socialist | 1999-2004 |
| Louis Michel | BE | Teacher; politician | Liberal | 2004 |
| Janez Potočnik | SI | Economist; academic | Liberal | 2004-2010 |
| Máire Geoghegan-Quinn | IE | Teacher; politician | Liberal | 2010-2014 |
| Carlos Moedas | PT | Civil engineer | Liberal-conservative | 2014-2019 |
| Mariya Gabriel | BG | Academic | EPP | 2019-present |
Research Director-Generals
| Name | Nationality | Background | Tenure |
| Jules Guéron (5) | FR | Chemist | 1958-1968 |
| Robert Toulemon | FR | Lawyer; French civil servant | 1968-1973 |
| Günter Schuster | DE | Physicist | 1973-1981 |
| Paolo Fasella | IT | Biochemist | 1981-1995 |
| Jorma Routti | FI | Physicist | 1996-2000 |
| Hendrik Tent (6) | NL | Economist; European civil servant | 2000 |
| Achilleas Mitsos | GR | Economist | 2000-2005 |
| José Manuel Silva Rodriguez | ES | Agricultural engineer; European civil servant | 2006-2010 |
| Robert-Jan Smits | NL | Economist; European civil servant | 2010-2018 |
| Jean-Eric Paquet | FR | Linguist; European civil servant | 2018-present |
(1) EURATOM Commission; European Coal & Steel Community (ECSC) also undertook R&D but leadership unknown to me other than comprised three committees: mining technology; exploitation of coal; steel technology research.
(2) Treaty amalgamating the executives of the three European Communities (ECSC, EEC & EURATOM) came into force in 1967.
(3) Mandate was split with Hellwig leading on research and technology, dissemination of knowledge & JRC; and Colonna di Paliano on industrial affairs.
(4) Mandate was split with Ruberti leading on environmental, medical & basic research & training; and Bangemann on computers & IT.
(5) EURATOM Commission
(6) Acting DG, Mar-Jul 2000
Lists are no-doubt incomplete and contain errors.
Obviously, science was conducted outside the purview of the RTD. These lists do not speak to this aspect.
Note on sources
The most useful account of the bureaucratic twists and turns of multilateral European research is provided in the official history by Luca Guzzetti (1995); this wonderful source is freely available online.
Also useful:
- André, 2006, L’espace européen de la recherche: histoire d’une idée, in: Journal of European Integration History
- Banchoff, 2002, The Politics of the European Research Area, ACES Working Paper
- Delanghe, et al., 2009, European Science and Technology Policy: Towards Integration Or Fragmentation?
- Krige & Guzzetti, 1997, History of European Scientific and Technological Cooperation
- Ruberti & André, 1995, Un espace européen de la science: réflexions sur la politique européenne de recherche
- Works by Gornitzka & collaborators, e.g., Gornitzka & Holst, 2015, The Expert-Executive Nexus in the EU: An Introduction, in: Politics & Governance; Gornitzka & Sverdrup, 2011, Access of Experts: Information and EU Decision-making, in: West European Politics; Executive Governance of EU Research Policy. An Organisation Theory Perspective (2012)
- The Academic Research Network on Agencification of EU Executive Governance (TARN)
- Gornitzka, 2012, WZB Discussion Paper SP IV 2012–502 SP IV 2012–502. WZB: WZB.
- Veera Mitzner, 2020, European Union Research Policy: Contested Origins
Supplement these accounts with information from (online) EU archives, namely the EUI & the University of Pittsburgh AEI – and for developments post-Guzzetti, with diverse reading over several years.
Regrettably, we don’t have much information on how EU science has played out across the various member states, and the impacts it has had, e.g., in the new accession countries in Eastern Europe.
A second caveat: we have few insights from ‘the inside’, off-line archives, or academic analysis (including the vast academic literature on the formation and workings of the EU).
It is worth noting the Making Europe website and book series (edited by Johan Schot & Philip Scranton) – in particular the work by Martin Kohlrausch & Helmuth Trischler, entitled Building Europe on Expertise (podcast). This interpretation places scientific and technical activities at the center of the history of European integration.
Science Think Tank 