8 INTERNATIONAL INNOVATION

INTERVIEW

Working at the interface between policy and science, the DG JRC offers an unbiased service, demystifying complex policy issues. Vladimír Šucha discusses the importance of a structured dialogue between scientists and policy makers and how this is facilitated by the Centre

B E T W E E N

T W O

W O R L D S VLADIMÍR ŠUCHA

DIRECTOR-GENERAL, JOINT RESEARCH CENTRE

OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION

Can you provide an insight into the Directorate-General-Joint Research Centre (DG JRC) EC and your role as Director-General?

I am honoured to lead DG JRC, which is a vital part of the extensive and diverse scientifi c advisory system that exists within the EC’s services. It provides in-house scientifi c support and advice to EU policies, and also plays an important role in transforming scientifi c knowledge into evidence for policies. In addition, the DG for Research and Innovation coordinates the fi nancing of long-term research projects, while various DGs use the advice of expert groups and scientifi c commities and advisory committees.

DG JRC has wide-ranging expertise, spanning fi nance, innovation, energy, transport, environment, climate change, agriculture, fi sheries, food security, security and disaster risk reduction, health, consumer protection, and nuclear safety and security. Its scientists also produce new scientifi c knowledge to develop and implement EU policy. Indeed, we compete with world leaders in many scientifi c areas.

My role is thus to ensure best use of our expertise to inform policy making and maintain our scientifi c excellence. This requires me to simultaneously have one foot in the policy world, cooperating with my fellow Director-Generals across the Commission, and the other in science, fostering our scientifi c expertise, for which cooperating with the best scientifi c institutes in Europe and beyond is crucial.

What are the challenges associated with feeding research into policy making?

The EC recently decided to set up a mechanism to strengthen the use of scientifi c advice for policy making. One of the objectives is for the Commission to benefi t from the wide range of knowledge and expertise that exists in research and academia across Europe. DG JRC collaborates extensively with many such organisations.

One challenge is that the sheer volume of knowledge provided by other research organisations can in itself create diffi culties with information overload for policy makers, which can sometimes create confl ict or confusion. Here, we fulfi l the role of making sense of the evidence.

We have also looked more generally at the challenges faced in providing evidence to support policy making. From our analyses, we have identifi ed three main challenges; namely, timing (of research and policy cycles), the role of scientists (in giving impartial advice and options without having a policy mandate), and communication (between scientists and policy makers). We believe that these are common to all organisations providing scientifi c advice. However, our close ties with EC’s policy DGs means that we can develop practices to best address these challenges.

How does DG JRC – established to provide EU policies with independent, evidence-based scientifi c and technical support – help surmount these challenges?

One of the advantages of DG JRC is that we operate daily at the interface between science and policy, and are therefore able to help demystify the enormous amount of scientifi c knowledge available today. Our integrity; independence of national, commercial and civil society interests; and recognition as an unbiased and policy-neutral service are crucial. This is particularly important when it comes to complex policy issues where the science is contested or where policy decisions will have signifi cant economic consequences. Few institutions in the world are in this position.

In addition to using in-house research and scientifi c activities, does JRC collect and collate research output from independent research organisations, such as universities, to help inform European policy?

We do not act alone in our scientifi c endeavours. In fact, providing the best scientifi c evidence and gathering the

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broadest set of high-quality knowledge requires us to work in partnership with the best scientifi c organisations globally. The breadth of our activities is so wide – spanning fi nancial stability, food security, energy and climate change, health, nuclear safety and security, for example – that we can only do this by collaborating.

We are actively involved in more than 100 networks and cooperate with over 1,000 research organisations, not only in Europe but worldwide. For example, we have excellent collaborations with European organisations, such as the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC), Conference of European Schools for Advanced Engineering Education and Research (CESAER), European Council of Applied Sciences Technologies and Engineering (Euro-CASE) and League of European Research Universities (LERU).

Collaboration comes naturally to us; we are always open to establishing new partnerships with high-quality organisations producing or translating knowledge into evidence for policy making. But we do not collaborate for the sake of collaborating. Rather, partnerships must serve the purpose of informing policy making. Such peer-to-peer scientifi c cooperation, without funding from our side, allows us to draw on external expertise that is not available inside DG JRC.

What steps are being taken to ensure that the outputs of research funded by Horizon 2020 effi ciently inform policy?

DG JRC carries out research activities in-house and our activities are primarily funded via Horizon 2020. We also play a role in supporting the programme’s overall implementation. For example, in close cooperation with the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, we are developing the European Research and Innovation Observatory and the Bioeconomy Observatory to monitor EU research and innovation policies and activities. Through partnerships with other research organisations we are also involved with some Horizon 2020 projects, providing a conduit through which the knowledge created becomes part of the evidence we provide for policy making. This also allows us to share and develop our expertise with external partners.

Another ambition is to facilitate access, for policy makers in particular, to the enormous amount of knowledge created, not only by Horizon 2020 and its predecessor programmes, but via work done directly for other Commission DGs by external contractors. To this end, we are working together with other EC services to improve knowledge management in the Commission. A signifi cant step towards better knowledge

DG JRC provides evidence to support policy making across almost the entire EU policy spectrum. Vladimír Šucha shares pertinent examples of outputs from JRC’s research institutes that have informed policy making or political decision making

ECONOMIC AND MONETARY UNION

Using our expertise in modelling and analytical tools, we contributed to the comprehensive review of the Commission’s fi nancial regulation agenda and to the preparation of the proposal for restructuring the EU banking sector.

REGIONAL POLICY

Our smart specialisation platform supports the development of research and innovation strategies across the EU. The platform allows regions to identify their potential and strengths and to focus policy action on a limited number of priorities. Our support also includes providing information, methodologies, expertise and advice to national and regional policy makers to help them develop their regional strategies.

CLIMATE AND ENERGY

We contributed signifi cantly to the 2030 climate and energy package, notably to the impact assessment accompanying the Commission’s proposal. We analysed, for example, the broader economic impacts of the tighter reduction targets proposed in the package using a JRC-developed model, which integrated the interactions between the economy, energy system and environment. Likewise, we provided the scenario analyses that led to the EU’s proposal for a potential international agreement in the upcoming climate conference, Paris COP21.

NUCLEAR SAFETY

Following the Fukushima accident, the EU undertook stress tests of its nuclear power stations. We not only acted as the scientifi c secretariat for these stress tests, but also had some of our nuclear safety experts participate in reviewing the self-assessments of Member States’ regulatory authorities. The outcomes of these stress tests led to an amendment of the Nuclear Safety Directive, again informed by our expertise.

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accessibility, which is also part of Horizon 2020’s open access policy, happens via our Science Hub. Another initiative, as a new way of organising knowledge, is the development of thematic knowledge centres, whose purpose is to be a one-stop shop reference for policy makers and other stakeholders, where they can easily access state-of-the-art knowledge and information. A knowledge centre on disasters and emergencies will soon be launched, with others to follow.

Can you elaborate on the function of JRC’s Science Hub?

The Science Hub (https://ec.europa.eu/jrc) is a single gateway to our scientifi c knowledge. It meets a real need to bring together, in an accessible way on one single platform, all of the scientifi c knowledge we produce to inform EU policies. It also serves to demonstrate the transparency and openness of our work and facilitates our open access policy. A user can easily access all of our publications and thereby have the scientifi c and technological evidence we provide to inform the EC’s policy-making process.

Since our stakeholders are extremely heterogeneous, the hub provides different ways of navigation to allow its users to easily fi nd content. The hub also features latest news on our scientifi c results, as well as exchange and networking opportunities bringing together policy makers, the scientifi c community and industry. It also provides the means for JRC alumni to stay in contact, thereby enhancing our global networking.

Working across broad and diverse areas, how does JRC prioritise the focus of its research?

The overall priorities for our work are fi rstly set by the political guidelines of EC President Jean-Claude Juncker, which are translated into the Commission’s work programme. Working in close cooperation with the policy DGs across the EC, on an annual basis we develop our specifi c activities to support their policy priorities. Over the past few years, the demand for evidence from our policy colleagues is increasing, demonstrating not only the importance they give to evidence, but also the trust they have in our capabilities.

Our expertise is used throughout the policy process, ranging from policy anticipation (exploratory research projects, horizon scanning, foresight), to formulation (assessing the impacts of policy options), to implementation (eg. indicators, remote satellite sensing, databases and information systems, reference materials, measurements and standards, and EU Reference Laboratories) to ex-post policy evaluation (assessing the effectiveness, effi ciency and added value of EU policies).

Our work on policy anticipation means that we do not always follow policy demands, but, in some instances, actually inform future policy directions. For example, we recently completed a foresight study on standardisation, which also included a vision for advanced manufacturing in 2025. This was taken up by, and is being developed further with, our colleagues at DG GROW.

One advantage of DG JRC is that we can quickly respond to immediate policy challenges as they arise. For example, our expertise was recently used to support the Commission’s coordination of the EU’s response to the devastating earthquake in Nepal by providing up-to-date situation reports and maps obtained from satellite images.

In what ways do you ensure that the outputs of the complex scientifi c research being undertaken by DG JRC scientists are accurately and effectively communicated to policy makers?

The communication of highly technical scientifi c fi ndings to a wider audience is a challenge, not only for us but for the wider scientifi c community. Presenting the outcomes of our work in the best format for policy makers – avoiding technical jargon – is key. There is no value to us, or indeed the Commission, if we provide a report that is too long and complicated for policy makers to use.

In addition to DG JRC’s Science Hub, we use many other tools, such as newsletters and social media, to better communicate our fi ndings, notably to policy makers. A recent initiative that I introduced is JRC Science for Policy briefs, whose purpose is to give scientifi c evidence to policy makers in a concise, objective and policy-relevant way. Another initiative is our Science meets Parliament event, which will take place this September in the European Parliament. It will facilitate structured dialogue between scientists and policy makers, allowing the former to better understand the political context, and the latter to better understand the science underlying many political decisions.

Finally, we are very much involved in Expo2015, which is an excellent opportunity to highlight the work of the EU and its Member States on food security, development and sustainable agriculture, not only to policy makers but, just as importantly, to the wider public.

HTTPS://EC.EUROPA.EU/JRC

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