Please find below the part of the speech of EU Commissioner Carlos Moedas at the ALLEA assembly regarding the MoU and the Academies:
“Among its 10 priorities, the new Commission has undertaken to make the EU more democratic. In my view, part of that undertaking will be to ensure that Europe’s finest academics can be called upon to offer impartial advice. We cannot even begin to tackle democratic failures, violent radicalisation, or rising intolerance and extremism, without the collective learning, wisdom and foresight of the academic community.
The academies have traditionally played an important role in many member states, gladly providing expert opinion to governments as necessary and academies will certainly find themselves playing a more and more significant role at European level: as EU policymakers increasingly wish to base their proposals on the best possible evidence; as EU policy comes under more rigorous public scrutiny; and as EU policy reaches new emerging sectors and technologies.
I was therefore very pleased to learn of the understanding recently reached by 5 academy organisations at European level, including ALLEA, to join forces and coordinate scientific input to policy debates at the European level.
As many of you will know, President Juncker has asked me to propose a new, ambitious scheme to provide the European Commission with independent scientific advice this summer. It is my opinion that we, as politicians, can no longer afford to let knowledge pass us by. We cannot allow ourselves to make decisions in the dark, when the path to illumination is so near at hand”