Not a Single Shade of Evidence: Unpacking the European Commission’s Discourse on Evidence-Informed Policymaking

Scholarship on the European Commission emphasises how the EU’s executive extensively relies on expertise and access to knowledge as a crucial source for legitimation and influence (Metz 2015; Boswell 2008). Although this technocratic approach has been raising concerns about the accountability and democratic legitimacy of EU decisions (Bertsou and Caramani 2020), expertise and evidence-informed policymaking still are at the core of the Commission’s approach (European Commission 2021; 2022). These calls for a more prominent role of evidence in policymaking have been launched in a context characterised by rampant misinformation and growing contestation of science – what has been defined as a ‘crisis of expertise’ (Eyal 2019, Abazi et al. 2021). While the Commission Presidency over the last decade has favored a more ‘political’ approach, we do not know much about how it is reconciled with this science-policy interface. In other words, how does the Commission envision the role of science and expertise in the EU policymaking process, and how has its approach evolved over time? Drawing on existing research in critical policy studies and STS, we inquire into the discursive construction of policymaking as a terrain for science-based policies. Put differently, we aim to understand how these discourses redefine the expected role of science and expertise in policymaking, tapping into the Commission’s work of balancing ‘technocratic’ arguments and concerns about democracy and accountability. The paper first analyses official documents and reports issued by the Commission in the last two decades, to reconstruct the Commission’s discourse on the role of science and evidence in policy.  We also draw on a wide range of empirical materials, including interviews with EU officials. Our analysis aims to provide a better understanding about how the Commission responds and adapts its epistemic practices to current challenges, such as the so-called crisis of expertise and increasing contestation of knowledge authority.