CERiM 2nd Annual Conference

Contestation of Expertise in the European Union: Policy-making between evidence-based decision-making and post-truth politics 

Expertise increasingly faces a contested role in decision-making and public debate. On the one hand, hardly any policy can be conceived today without expert consultation, yet on the other hand, expertise seems too readily to be disqualified in public debate even in most important national or European decisions. This contested position of experts has become apparent in the context of a number of recent referenda campaigns, such as in the Netherlands, Hungary and the United Kingdom, and has also played a role in debates on many high profile issues such as the regulation of genetically modified organisms or the negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.