Report on Second Annual CERiM Conference: Contestation of Expertise in the European Union
− 1 min readOn 20 April, CERiM held its second annual conference on "Contestation of Expertise in the European Union: Policy-making between evidence-based decision-making and post-truth politics" at the Crowne Plaza, Maastricht.
The conference welcomed a number of key experts and practitioners from various disciplines. The day consisted of three panels, each addressing a different aspect (e.g. legal, epistemological, and scientific) on the relationship between expertise, knowledge, and policy-making in the EU. The first panel on epistemic and public contestation of expertise, chaired by Anna Herranz-Surralles, consisted of presentations by Dr. Marija Bartl (University of Amsterdam) and Johan Christensen (Leiden University) on an institutionalist approach towards understanding the use of knowledge in organizations and the use of academic research in advisory reports in Norway, respectively. The following panels addressed topics such as the use of expertise by the EEAS (presented by Sophie Vanhoonacker) and scientific knowledge in national courts in the Netherlands (presented by Marjan Peeters) The conference ended with a roundtable, chaired by Ellen Vos, on the role of expertise in EU policy-making. Participants included Anthony Teasdale (Director-General of the EP Research Service) and Arjen Meij (Former Judge in the General Court of the EU). The full programme and list of participants can be found here, though not all were able to present. For a more detailed report on the event, please find it below.