The European Commission quietly confirmed Wednesday that its most senior scientific role, that of chief scientific adviser (CSA) to its president, is being scrapped.
Professor Anne Glover, who has occupied the CSA role since 2012, broke the news in an email Wednesday night to Sir Paul Nurse, president of the Royal Society, and his counterparts in national academies across Europe. The email says simply:
The European Commission confirmed to me yesterday that, all decisions on the Bureau of European Policy Advisers (BEPA) were repealed and so the function of Chief Scientific Adviser has ceased to exist. The new European Political Strategy Centre (EPSC) which “replaces” BEPA does not comprise a function “Chief Scientific Adviser”.
In recent months, a war of letters has raged between critics and supporters of the role. In July 2014, a coalition of environmental groups, including Greenpeace, wrote to the incoming president of the Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, calling for the CSA role to be scrapped. Their letter argued that: “The post of CSA is fundamentally problematic as it concentrates too much influence in one person…”.
Soon afterwards, a response letter in support of the CSA role was sent to Juncker, signed by 40 scientific organisations and 773 individuals, which said “we cannot stress strongly enough our objection to any attempt to undermine the integrity and independence of scientific advice received at the highest level of the European Commission.” (Full disclosure: I was a signatory to this second letter, in my capacity as chair of the Campaign for Social Science). Further letters of support for Glover were sent to Juncker by several scientific, business and civil society organisations, while Greenpeace also elaborated its position in a piece by Doug Parr on this blog.
It is hard not to interpret this week’s decision as a serious downgrading of the status of scientific advice at the top of the Commission. I fully expect Europe’s research community, and all those who want a stronger role for evidence in EU policy, to be up in arms over this outcome, and Juncker now needs to clarify with urgency what precise structures for scientific advice he plans to put in place.
Read full, original article: Juncker axes Europe’s chief scientific adviser
