European Union Research Policy

Contested Origins

Veera Mitzner

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9783030413958
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book describes the emergence of research policy as a key competence of the European Union (EU).It shows how the European Community (EC, the predecessor of the EU), which initially had very limited legal competence in the field, progressively developed a solid policy framework presenting science and research as indispensable tools for European economic competitiveness and growth. In the late 20th century Western Europe, hungry for growth, concerned about the American technological lead, and keen to compete in the increasingly open international markets, the argument for a joint European effort in science and technology seemed plausible. However, the EC was building its new functions in an already crowded field of European research collaboration and in a shifting political context marked by austerity, national rivalries, new societal and environmental challenges, and emerging ambivalence about science. This book conveys the contested history of one of the EU's most successful policies. It is a story of struggle and frustration but also of a great institutional and intellectual continuity. The ideational edifice for the EC/EU research policy that was put in place during the 1960s and 1970s years proved remarkably robust. Its durability enabled the rapid takeoff of the European Commission's initiatives in the more favorable political atmosphere of the early 1980s and the subsequent expansion of the EU research funding instruments and programs that permanently transformed the European research landscape.

© The Author(s) 2020

V. MitznerEuropean Union Research PolicyEurope in Transition: The NYU European Studies Serieshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41395-8_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Veera Mitzner¹

(1)

Future Earth, The Sustainability Innovation Lab at Colorado, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

Veera Mitzner

End Abstract

In a Europe threatened by narrow-minded nationalism and looming disintegration, there is a thirst for success stories. The European Union (EU), which is stronger than ever, also looks more vulnerable and exposed than ever, and one might ask where it has, during its over sixty years of existence, done well to serve the self-interested and erratic member states, so different from each other. An area of sustained growth and impact has been the research policy. In 2020, the EU is a major player in supporting and fostering European science. The next EU research funding program, Horizon Europe, will be the largest in the Union’s history: almost 100 billion euros will be dedicated to research across the EU area—and beyond. Horizon Europe builds on a continuous expansion of EU research funds and activity and highlights a continent-wide consensus on the benefits of pooling resources and granting the European institutions a significant role in shaping research and science across the national borders. Within just a few decades, the emergence of these activities has radically transformed the European research landscape and changed the way in which research is conducted, funded, discussed, and managed at both national and European levels.

With the EU research arm so strong and generous, it is easy to forget the rockiness of the path that led to the massive budgets and initiatives now bolstering European research. As many other aspects of European integration, for a long time, this success looked unlikely as research remained outside of the core competences of the European Communities (EC)¹ and the member states were reluctant to yield sovereignty in such a vital sector. Originally, the three European Communities—which in 1992 were transformed into the European Union—had barely any research policy competence: besides the activities of the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) in civilian nuclear technology, the limited activities of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in the field of coal and steel, and some provisions for agricultural research given to the European Economic Community (EEC), the Treaties establishing these three Communities in 1951 and 1958 remained completely silent on the subject. There was no word about the kind of general research policy the European Union is now so forcefully promoting.

This book explores the contested and perhaps even surprising emergence of European Union research policy. How and why did the Community move to an area that did not belong to its core competences? Where did the idea of a common research policy come from? What were its driving forces? Who were its main advocates? How did its design and objectives evolve over time? What made research one of the major concerns of the current European Union? By seeking answers to these questions, this book contributes to the historiography of European integration and the broader transnational history² of post-war Europe. Furthermore, by analyzing the creation of the new forms of governance for European research, it adds to the scholarly discussion on policy-making on science.

In addition to describing the creation of one of the EU’s most successful policies while portraying the historical complexity of European integration, this book takes a hard look on the underlying political discourses and the robust mental frames that have enabled certain political paths and that continue to guide political action. Indeed, a central contention here is that a strong and widely shared belief in research as an engine for economic growth constituted the central mobilizing force for EC/EU research policy. Without this specific understanding of science and its societal impact, which emerged from the economic scholarship in the United States and after World War II, and was rapidly popularized in Europe by the Organization of European Economic Co-operation (OEEC) and its successor, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), it would have been hard if not impossible for the EC to justify political activity in the field of research. During the first two decades after World War II, basically all West European nation-states followed the American example and embarked on a feverish crusade on growth. Consequently, as science was recognized as a source of growth, national institutions were rapidly set up to steer and promote scientific activity. The obsession with growth and competitiveness survived even the brief disillusion with science and expansionary economic policies of the late 1960s and the early 1970s. In fact, by the early 1980s, when economies in Western Europe were staggering, and the IT revolution posed new challenges to the European “knowledge society,” the enthusiasm about science as an engine for prosperity appeared stronger than ever. And since the goal of economic prosperity was articulated in the EC founding treaties, the supporters of a common research policy, by framing science as a source of economic growth, were able to move the EC into this new territory. Profiting from the postwar market liberalization, rapid technological change, and prevalent worries about European technological retard vis-à-vis its main commercial competitors, they managed to gain support for initiatives that gradually grew into major policy programs. Soon, the contours of research policy in Europe were permanently transformed.

With its explicit attempt to analyze the process of European integration as a part of a broader European and international history, this book adds to the recent studies challenging the more traditional approach treating the Community like a closed reality standing apart from the rest of the world.³ As Kiran Klaus Patel has argued, “many of the features of the EC/EU can only be understood if studied in a longer timeframe and against the backdrop of these other settings, rather than in isolation.”⁴ In research, as in many other fields, the Community was a latecomer that not only borrowed and copied from other international organizations, but also competed and cooperated with them. From the very beginning, the EC/EU research policy was promoted and shaped in a crowded field of national and international activity where its existence and ambitions had to be justified. This book supports the findings of other scholars that show how “European rules and regulations were functionally highly fragmented, as many different organizations dealt with a variety of issues, often for specific sectors and activities.”⁵ It describes an exciting and hitherto undocumented story of a messily evolving area of European cooperation, where the EC/EU’s gradually strengthening position led to the uneasy marginalization of other previously important European venues, and to an emergence of entirely new ways of research policy-making.

Writing this particular success story of European integration could easily lead to a teleological narrative of an ever-closer union, steadily moving toward a predetermined goal.⁶ However, by showing that this process was not smooth, one can provide valuable insights into a much-neglected aspect of European integration: setback and failure. Very often, the process of integration diverted from the initially envisioned path and resulted in rather creative formations that not quite complied with the federalist dream, but nevertheless served the purpose of achieving greater European unity. To offer an example, two 1970s efforts by the European Commission to enlarge the Community’s research policy activity led to the establishment of new institutions outside the EC structures: in 1971, a total of 19 European countries agreed on the creation of European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST), a loose intergovernmental framework devoted to easing technological cooperation. Three years later, the Commission lost a struggle for the European Science Foundation (ESF), which came into being as a separate, non-governmental organization, and not an EC institution. Today, both institutions continue their existence in the margins of the EU, whose position as the primary European arena for joint research effort largely goes unrivalled.⁷ However, back in the 1970s, they challenged the EC-centric path toward European unity. This book accounts both stories, highlighting the pivotal role of experts and other non-state actors in both enabling and complicating the EC/EU policy-making. While important proposals originated from other institutions and individuals as well, the European Commission—with its exclusive right for making political initiatives at the EC/EU level and its consistent pro-integration ambition—usually took the driver’s seat in research policy. Often it was pushing its vision with weak alliances. The lack of support by scientists and their representatives largely explains the Commission’s early difficulties in convincing the national governments of a Brussels-centric vision of European research policy. The success of the Commission’s plans depended not only on their approval in intergovernmental bargains but also on endorsement among a number of other actors with the power to influence national and European political agendas.

Just as Wolfram Kaiser and Jan-Henrik Meyer have argued, in European integration and the Community politics and policy-making, “various societal actors involved in network-type relations with national governmental and supranational institutional actors were often important for the formation of strategic political alliances, the definition of key political objectives and agendas as well as workable policy compromises.”⁸ To fully understand the dynamics of European integration, one has to look beyond the national governments and the formal EC/EU institutions and recognize the pivotal role of the representatives of social groups in national societies. In research policy, the role of experts was particularly pronounced. Indeed, John Peterson and Margaret Sharp, writing about technology policy, have argued it being “hard to imagine that another policy field could be more technocratic or dominated by experts.” The same could be said about research policy: as a rule, research policy deals with complicated and very technical issues that often go beyond the knowledge of ordinary politicians and diplomats. Moreover, in the rapidly evolving and future-oriented world of science and technology, national preferences are sometimes hard to define—which leaves the floor open to those who are thought to have the required knowledge and skills in a given subject area.⁹ Strong expert participation in the Community decision-making on research, especially in the period covered by this study, can also be explained by the relative novelty and the weak juridical basis of the policy sector.¹⁰ From its very beginning, thus, the Community research policy was outlined in various expert groups and committees, constituted by national administrators, scientists, and industrialists who occupied certain authority in their perspective countries. In a rule, these experts had relatively broad policy mandates to conduct their work, and often, their proposals were adopted with minor if any modifications. This finding supports the recent academic literature emphasizing the importance of seeing the numerous expert groups involved in European-level policy-making more than as technocratic bodies and recognizing their influence on the content of EU policies.¹¹ We can also observe transnational cross-fertilization of ideas as experts moved between different organizations, such as the OECD, the EC/EU, and national administrations. Furthermore, there was a certain process of institutionalization of expert groups, when cooperation became more formalized and permanent.

Some of these individuals could be seen as constituting an “epistemic community.” Peter M. Haas defines the epistemic community as a “network of professionals with recognized expertise and competence in a particular domain and an authoritative claim to policy-relevant knowledge within that domain or issue area.”¹² In addition to sharing a set of normative and causal beliefs providing value-based rationale for activity ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III