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University World News
September 19, 2015
by Jan Petter Myklebust
More than 150 names have been put forward for membership of the high level group of scientific advisors being created under a new system for providing independent scientific advice in European Commission, or EC, policy-making.
Carlos Moedas, European Commissioner for research, science and innovation, said in a speech at the European Parliament last Tuesday that consultation for nominations has just closed and the response has been “extremely positive”.
An identification committee will now propose members by the end of October and the Commissioner expects the group to be up and running by the end of the year.
The role of the group will be to ensure that the Commission has the best available scientific advice, wherever it comes from,” he said. “It should guarantee the quality and independence of the advice provided. It should help identify topics where independent advice is needed.”
In his speech, Moedas stressed that independent scientific advice was needed to inform policy-makers.
“We want to be sure that decisions on the safety of new medicines, novel foods, new technologies and so on, are based on facts and not fiction. We want to ensure we take the right decisions in a crisis. We want to ensure that the evidence on which we base our decisions is robust and unbiased,” he said.
An important experiment
Professor Roger Pielke, director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, told University World News that the SAM was a highly visible, important experiment in the design and implementation of a science advisory body and “a lot of people are watching carefully how this experiment goes”.
“The Commission already has an in-house science service in the Joint Research Centre so integrating the new SAM with the already existing commission expertise and capabilities, if successful, could really lead to a positive innovation in the advisory process.”
Kurt Deketelaere, secretary-general of the League of European Research Universities, said the league had submitted the names of 15 or so candidates for the high-level group and looked forward to a “clever selection” with “attention paid to creating a balanced composition taking into account disciplines, regions, gender and age, so that we have a representative group, really able to advise the EC in a clever way”. Read more …
