Solving complex societal challenges requires evidence-based decision-making. Therefore, the EU Commission wants to bring scientists and policymakers closer together to improve regulation.
The challenges of our time need a deep understanding, knowledge and expertise of policymakers and have to be tackled with regulatory measures. Covid-19, climate change, energy prices, the digital and green transition or Artificial Intelligence may overwhelm politicians with the sheer quantity of information available, especially considering growing hurdles by polarisation, disinformation and misinformation circulating in various media outlets. To make better and more effective policies while reducing unintended consequences, scientists and policymakers should work closer together.
Covid-19 showcased the need and benefit of interdisciplinary knowledge in policy-making, meanwhile, it revealed some difficulties in communicating and synthesising research results in a manner that policymakers can actually use them. Missing coordination at the EU level aggravated this situation as it is stated in the Communication ‘Drawing the early lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic’ by the European Commission (EC).
The core challenge for the democratic system is to give decision-makers access to the best available scientific data and evidence when needed. However, the difficulty is that the science must be in a format policymakers can understand it to use the knowledge for their decisions. By using science, which is trusted by citizens, also the confidence in policies can be enhanced as the public trust in scientists (43%) is higher than that in national governments (26%) or journalists (19%). Furthermore, it is an enforcing sign that since 2018, the trust in scientists even increased from 34% to 43% by the end of 2020 globally, according to the `Wellcome Global Monitor 2020: Covid-19’.
The EC tries to foster science-policy interaction on EU and national levels as described in the Staff Working Document (SWD) – `Supporting and connecting policymaking in the Member States with scientific research’ published on 28 October 2022. The SWD was jointly presented and discussed by the Joint Research Center (JRC), the Directorate Generals for Research and Innovation (DG RTD), and Structural Reform Support (DG REFORM). The aim is to promote discussions and policy developments of science for policy schemes in the Member states, which was already triggered to some extent by Covid-19. For this, the SWD focusses on three main aspects which need intensified attention.
First, there is a need for boundary organisations and networks in science for policy initiatives to stop fragmentation, address lack of coordination and therefore reduce duplication or contradictory communication. By establishing connective science-policy institutions, diverse issues can be handled at the same time – dissemination, translation, synthesis of independent results, management of requests for evidence, or access to research could be improved. By giving the opportunity to meet and exchange ideas between scientists and policymakers at national and international levels in a structured way, an important bridge between these two professions could be built. In this regard, the Technical Support Instrument manged by DG REFORM is currently working jointly with the OECD on the project `Building capacity for evidence-informed policymaking in governance and public administrations in a post-pandemic Europe’. The project plans to establish capacities for effective engagement between scientists, evaluators and policymakers in seven EU countries (Greece, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Netherlands).
Second, there is a need to build professional competences of scientists and policymakers for effective science for policy. Scientists need to be equipped with the communication skills to transfer their results into something understandable for policymakers. Besides, they would need an incentive to do so as the academic or industry environments, where scientists are currently working, are not recognising or rewarding science for policy work. On the other side, policymakers must learn how to understand scientific results and how to deal with scientific uncertainty or conflicting results. Therefore, the JRC, in collaboration with the EU Policymaking Hub of the EC, has already developed the two competence frameworks `Innovative Policymaking’ addressing policymakers and `Science4Policy’ addressing scientists.
Third, there is the need to improve the governance in the Member states for science-for-policy. Clear guidelines are currently missing. It is important to avoid falling into an over-reliance on technocratic solutions. At the same time, a more transparent communication strategy of policymakers is needed to show which scientific evidence was taken into account for a decision, so that multidisciplinarity is also ensured. The EC tries to give guidance in this direction with the `Better Regulation Toolbox’ and the `EU Foresight network’.
With that, the SWD identifies the rationale behind building the capacity of science for policy ecosystems involving both the wider public administration sector as well as the research and innovation system. Furthermore, it depicts the challenges encountered at science-policy interfaces and shows good practice examples at the EU and national levels on how to tackle them. Development of instruments and policies supporting evidence-based policymaking as well as infrastructures which help mutual learning is crucial to make effective regulation in these fast-moving times.
The recently presented evidence report on crisis management in the EU contains good practice examples of science-policy interaction. It consists of two parts, one on ‘strategic crisis management’ developed by the EU Scientific Advice Mechanism (SAM) based on evidence by Science Advice for Policy by European Academics (SAPEA) and one on ‘values in times of crisis’ by the European Group on Ethics in Science and new Technologies (EGE). Together these science-for-policy structures present not only an evidence review report, but also include policy recommendations and a detailed ethics statement, depicting the need for improved handling of crises like Covid-19, climate change or the Ukraine crisis on EU level. Crises are changing in their nature, getting more complex, having an increased outreach and effect on society, economy and environment, to which the EU must adapt.