Abstract
Focused on the experts groups of the European Commission, this article aims to understand not only who the European experts are, but also on what grounds. It adopts a sociological perspective, paying attention to the social properties of those actors, in order to better grasp which type of actors can gain access to the European policy-making process by this way, but also how the experts’ authority can get the upper hand in the European arena, and under what conditions it may be exerted. The article begins with an overview of the space of European expertise: highlighting the political uses of the groups to explain the privileged recruitment of experts in certain categories of practitioners (‘academics’, members of interest groups, national civil servants and so on). These political uses of expertise also contribute to promoting particular resources and practices, leading to analysis of the properties shared by the experts, in spite of their apparent heterogeneity. A number of these properties are moreover acquired in the European space, inviting to take a closer look at the way these expertise functions are fulfilled in professional trajectories associated with EU institutions.
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Notes
Page of the secretaryship-general http://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regexpert/index.cfm, visited on 1 September 2008.
Associated with the ‘better regulation’ reform initiated in the Commission.
Regarding the status of the group, refer to JO L.21 of 25/01/06. Regarding an introduction of its members and of some of its activities, refer to the dedicated webpage on the Europa site: http://ec.europa.eu/employment_social/fundamental_rights/policy/hlgph_en.htm.
Interview with an official of the DG for JFS, April 2008.
The purpose here is obviously not to oppose technique and policy as if it were possible to distinguish among various tight categories, in reality, of ‘political’ or ‘technical’ issues: these qualifications refer less to objects than to the way they are treated and prepared at certain moments of the decision-making process (Robert, 2005), which means that the same stake and hence the same group may move along this axis as they are treated.
Interview with a member of the group of the political advisers, July 2005.
Interview with a member of the GD for JFS, April 2008.
Page of the secretariat-general http://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regexpert/index.cfm, visited on 1 September 2008.
Interview with a member of the DG for Employment, November 2004.
According to the registry of the Commission mentioned previously, close to one-third of the expert groups would include experts belonging to the wider category of the scientists and academics.
Interview with one of the former directors of the Prospective Unit, J. Vignon, November 2004.
Interview with a member of the DG for JFS, October 2006.
The weight of the academic capital can be observed most particularly in the case of BEPA. The BEPA is an authority enjoying the status of a Directorate-General, directly accountable to President Barroso. It inherited from the Group of Political Advisers(GOPA) created when Romano Prodi was President and, previously, from the prospective unit – created by Roy Jenkins and quite visible below both mandates of Jacques Delors. Under the current and immediately preceding mandates, these structures have generated and led expert groups whereof certain have won particular renown, like the Sapir group (Peuziat, 2005). All the members of the three expert groups associated with the BEPA (‘political analysis group’, ‘economic analysis group’, ‘society analysis group’) fulfil or have fulfilled teaching and research positions in university, which was also the case of the previous groups and structures: six members out of seven forming the Sapir group are introduced as professors. These three groups are accountable to ‘special advisers’, working within the BEPA during the presidential mandate, which also originate from the academic world. The weight of the academic capital is not the exclusivity of the BEPA and can be observed in most groups benefiting from great visibility: let us quote, for instance, the ‘Kok’ task force after the name of the former Dutch Prime Minister, Wim Kok, responsible for preparing in 2003 a report on the employment policies in Europe, and whereof five of the eight members are university professors.
For an illustration of this opinion on a group of experts at European level (Peuziat, 2005), for a reflection on the issues of multipositionality in an expertise context (Memmi, 1989).
The Strauss-Kahn group, also designated as the ‘Round Table: a sustainable project for European society’ has been set up with the group of the political advisers accountable to the president of the Commission (GOPA). It has been entrusted with a reflection of the promotion modalities of the economic, social and environmental dimensions of the sustainable development. It operated in 2003.
Interview with a former member of the group of the political advisers, July 2005.
Interview with a member of the DG for Agriculture and rural development, July 2005 (conducted by C. Robert).
Interview with a member of the DG for JFS responsible for a group of experts, April 2008.
This is what, for instance, the composition of the ‘High level consultative group on the integration of the underprivileged ethnic minorities in society and in the labour market’ illustrates, already mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. Interrogated on the criteria that have governed the selection of its members, the administrator of the Commission will first of all come back to the eclecticism of the members of the group at length, whose interest in the situation of the Rom minority in Europe is mixed, to say the least. It is only when asked about the means used for locating the people affected that he will explain: ‘we knew the ten of them, because each of them, in their past, had collaborated with the Commission in various contexts’.17 The careers of the experts affected testify in addition to the variety of these prior forms of collaboration. The Finnish female expert Tarja Summa presented as a ‘former mediator for refugees’ has fulfilled important functions with the Finnish government during the Finnish presidency of the UE. Ilze Brands Kehris, female director in Latvia of a centre for human rights, has been a member of the management committee of what has become the European agency for fundamental rights. Bashy Quraishy is the Danish president of the European network against racism, which has long maintained close relations with the DG for ‘Employment, social affairs and equality of fair opportunity’. José Manuel Fresno is Director General of the Luis Vives Foundation, which promotes the third sector and the social economy in Spain, and which benefits from a financial support granted by the European social fund and strong recognition from the Commission. Jarmila Balážová, a journalist and activist in the Czech Republic for the defence of the Rom minorities is also a close relation of Commissioner Vladimir Spidla. Finally, István Sértő-Radics, presented as the mayor of a small town in Hungary, Uszka, within which the Rom minority would be particularly represented, is also a member of the Committee of the Regions of the European Union.
Interview with a member of the group of the political advisers, July 2005.
Leading to seeing Expert Groups as places for socialisation (Robert, 2010).
Inasmuch as for the majority of the groups the identities of the experts are often not made public and that even for those groups for which the composition is publicised, the data are not available before 2005.
Such is the case of Elspeth Guild, a well-known figure for her legal mobilisations on migration issues in Europe. A Professor at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands, a member of the CEPS (Centre for European Policy Studies) think tank, she was also a partner in a lawyer's firm (Kingsley Napley in London). She has not only contributed to several FPRDs for the DG for ‘Research’, but has also been an expert on several occasions and, since the beginning of the 1990s, for the DG for ‘Employment’ (within the framework of the observatory of the free circulation of workers), but also for the DG for ‘Justice and Internal Affairs’ (now DG for Justice, freedom and security), in particular through the Odysseus network.
It is also one of the features exhibited by Jean-Michel Eymeri throughout his career as a European expert for which he offered a reflexive analysis in a recent paper (Eymeri-Douzans, 2008). Then a member of the European Institute for Public Administration of Maastricht, to which institutions commissioned research reports on a regular basis, he was ‘noticed’ by the unit of the DG for ‘Information society’, for which he prepared three documents in 1999. He then took part, always for the same departments, in various juries, conferences and so on. A little later, he was involved in valuer activities for the research projects financed on the FCRD and became a regular collaborator for these missions for the DG for ‘Research’, who entrusted him with complementary expertise missions. These joint activities for the DGs for ‘Research’ and ‘Information society’ notably led, in 2003, to his integration into a group of eight experts formed for advising Commissioner Erkki Liikanen in the preparation of the ‘eEurope Action Plan 2005’, which was adopted during the European Council in Seville.
The economist André Sapir, a professor at the Free University of Brussels, a doctor of the John Hopkins University, also participated in two European think tanks (Bruegel and the CEPR). Jointly with his different academic and counselling activities, he took on, as soon as 1990, expertise functions with the DG for ‘Economic and financial affairs’, from 1990 to 1993 first of all, then from 1995 to 2001. Once he had become an economic adviser to the president of the Commission when Romano Prodi was elected, he was appointed in 2002 President of the high-level group in charge of reviewing all the economic policies of the UE; the group produced the report entitled ‘An agenda for a Growing Europe’, better known as the Sapir report in 2003. Under Barroso, and for the whole duration of the college, he was president of the group of experts in economy accountable to the BEPA. During the same period in 2005, he was approached to join a high-level group composed of recognised economists, and reported to Commissioner J. Potočnik for advising him on the Lisbon strategy in the field of research.
A junior researcher in an Institute in Luxemburg, Y has been, since the end in the 1990s, associated with different European projects on the issue of statistical indicators related to social protection. He has written several reports for various international organisations, he has also served two presidencies of the UE regarding these issues as a political adviser and has regularly represented his government in certain governmental authorities. He was then approached at the beginning of the 2000s by the DG for ‘Employment’, which created a new group of experts on social inclusion. At the end of the mandate, the departments wished to see the group replaced with a network of independent experts, they approached Y informally so that he formed with another colleague a network of which it would be the coordinator. Shortly after being accepted, Y was appointed as president of a more selective and more visible group, a task force entrusted with generating a report on children's poverty, addressed to the Commission and the Member-States. (Interview with a member of a group of experts of the DG for Employment, February 2005).
Holding a sociology thesis from the University of New York, a specialist of science sociology, Helga Nowotny has taught at several universities in Europe (Austria, France, Switzerland, Hungary). She has also fulfilled high-level functions within the European Science Foundation since the 1980s, and she was a member of the board of administration of several research institutions in Europe. As of the second half of the 1990s, she has worked as an expert with the DG for ‘Research’ of the Commission, first of all as a valuer for the projects offered for financing on FCRDs. She was then called upon to participate in the expert group entrusted with preparing the guidelines for the ‘Human and social sciences’ section of the same programmes. In 2001, she was offered the presidency of a new expert groups entrusted with reflecting, with academics and industrialists, on the future of the Community research policy (ESTA then EURAB – European Union Research Advisory Board). She was appointed vice-president of the newly implemented European Research Council whose creation had been in particular recommended by the EURAB.
Such is the case for the legal expert whose participation in a group of expert enabled to open new fields of research in compared law: he mentioned in particular access via the group to foreign data, to European colleagues with whom he could set up international research teams, which in turn attracted European financings more easily. For another expert, a senior scientist in a prestigious college, it was the ‘European dimension’ conferred to his CV by his 6-year-plus experience in a group of experts, associated with his commitment in research projects financed by the Commission, which contributed to his being appointed at the head of his department.
Interview, July 2005.
For a perspective of such type on governance: Padioleau (2000).
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Appendix
The expert groups constitute, in spite of recent reforms, a field hardly accessible to external observers. The constitution and the leadership of expert groups have indeed long been considered as activities only governed by the internal life of the Commission and which said Commission was consequently not particularly accountable to the outside world. As these activities are exerted in much decentralised fashion, most often at units, and on the basis of very flexible administrative rules, the memory of these activities often existed only in departments, and in very disparate forms. It was only recently – in 2005, further to a series of parliamentary interpellations, and along the line of the administrative reforms initiated by the White Book on Governance (European Commission, 2001b) – that a registry of these groups was prepared and made public (http://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regexpert/index.cfm). For the reasons just mentioned above, the work instrument provided by said registry is not always reliable and contains lacunar data. Within the framework of our investigation, we have had the opportunity to discover that numerous groups were listed therein, whereas others, mentioned in the registry, did not appear to exist actually or to have been dissolved for a long time. Similarly, the pieces of information relative to their compositions (per great types of actors) and operations (frequency of the meetings, objectives assigned) are succinct and inaccurate: by way of example, a group listed as temporary will have, more often than not, been in existence for a long time and met more frequently than a so-called permanent group. Finally, the registry does not contain systematically, far from it, information on the identity of the members of the groups. Only those whose creation originated from a formal decision of the Commission, adopted by the College, are subjected to this obligation. In particular for these reasons, to which is added the overabundant number of existing groups – often estimated as more than 1200, among which 986 were listed in March 2009 on the site of the Commission – this research relies on qualitative data to a vast extent.
The investigation hence rests on a little more than 30 groups, registered in different Directorates-general and departments: General Secretaryship; DG for ‘Employment, social affairs and equality of fair opportunity’; DG for ‘Transports and energy’; DG for ‘Education and culture’; DG for ‘Research’; DG for ‘Justice, freedom and security’ (interviews conducted by Anne-Cécile Douillet and Jacques de Maillard); DG for ‘Agriculture and rural development’ (interviews conducted by Marie Hrabanski); Group of the political advisers and Office of the European political advisers (interviews conducted with Oliver Baisnée).
The data are formed after looking up administrative sources and mainly on the basis of semi-directive interviews (around 60) with the civil servants in charge of the composition and of the follow-up of the groups on the one hand, and with experts who are members of these groups on the other.
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Robert, C. Who are the European experts? Profiles, trajectories and expert ‘careers’ of the European Commission. Fr Polit 8, 248–274 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/fp.2010.13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/fp.2010.13