The new EU Commission think tank ‘feels like a success’

The European Commission’s revamped in-house think tank, the European Political Strategy Centre (EPSC), is an experiment that is working, according to its senior adviser on innovation, Robert Madelin. “It feels like a success,” Madelin told Science|Business.

The new think tank has introduced more talent and ideas into the Commission, according to Madelin. “It’s 90 per cent young, brilliant outsiders so it’s a unique community in the EU institutions. Also, it’s the only place in the Commission which combines foresight with all the policy areas. A conversation in the EPSC is a bit like an editorial meeting in a major newsroom,” he said.

EPSC, which reports directly to Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, replaced the Bureau of European Policy Advisors, which served the previous president José Manuel Barroso.

Madelin was formerly director general of DG Connect (Department for Communications Networks, Content & Technology), a post he left in June last year to become the EPSC’s ‘adviser on innovation’ – a newly-created position.

The assignment is to push original ideas. Madelin is in charge of a taskforce of 20 volunteers drawn from across five departments of education, industry, the Joint Research Centre, communications and research.

“Senior officials are quite often advisers in line DGs but having them as advisers across the whole piece is an experiment,” Madelin noted.

Some observers view his post as quietly revolutionary in an institution with an ingrained working procedure. 

In theory, good ideas from the taskforce can bypass the traditional hierarchy of the directorate-general and go straight to the ear of the President. If Juncker embraces them, they could land back on DG desks in the form of a request for legislation.

Madelin thinks this bottom-up flavour helps people be more forward looking. “Our mandate is very clearly to say what we think, we don’t have to go asking for permission. We’re asked to be creative and out of the box, to identify principles and approaches which have not been tried before. There’s no [time-consuming] inter-service clearance,” he said.  

Since the 53-person EPSC is not a policymaking body, it is difficult to judge if its outputs affect decisions, however. “Its impact is not one-for-one,” said Madelin. “In a DG I knew the following week if I had an impact when a Commissioner could tell me, ‘No, I don’t like that’. Here by comparison there’s no cycle time – you’re gardening public policy and some plants take longer to grow than others.”

However, EPSC is starting to get noticed. Readership of the team’s policy briefs is quite good and citation rates are improving quite a lot. There have been 12 papers on issues including climate change, eurozone reform, a review of the Europe 2020 strategy and most recently the EU’s counter-terrorism response.

Progress on June report

Madelin’s contribution will be hidden from outside eyes until next month, when he will publish a report on making Europe a more agile and competitive continent.

As laid out in his mission letter from Juncker, Madelin’s report should describe “how best to position Europe as a global pro-innovation actor... how to bring European ideas to market, what regulatory and policy framework can best support this and how more effectively to create deep and agile finance for innovative growth”.

With the writing phase only beginning, Madelin declined to preview any ideas. “I have only since Easter begun to shape what it is I think I’ve been learning,” he said. “One of the things I have discovered is that in the 40 years since I left university I haven’t gotten any better; the idea of producing written material close to the deadline remains my standard operating procedure.”

The report will not be an action plan, but a vision of Europe’s potential across many sectors. “You start by saying where you want to get to. The implicit recommendation, I guess, will be here’s a vision of our future as an innovative continent. The report won’t go down to the level of looking at whether, for example, e-health holds bigger potential for Europe than cybersecurity.”

“I think you only make recommendations when you have a strong, no-regrets feeling that [something] is the thing to do,” said Madelin.

In terms of research, Madelin says he has been, “Talking to everybody from all the continents and from all walks of life – people in the Commission, trade unions, start-ups, big companies.”

He has learnt that, “Actually, depending on who you benchmark us with, Europe is not doing so badly. There’s a certain unevenness in the way we pursue innovation though. We’re failing to apply best practice systematically. Even inside member states, some of their policies are top ten, some of them are bottom ten. We’re not even spreading best practice within a single member state.”

More buy-in

Madelin has imitated EU Research Commissioner Carlos Moedas’ approach to the proposed European Innovation Council, by drawing in more ideas from the public. Moedas is making a big effort to get buy-in from start-ups, companies and universities.

In his section of the Commission website, Madelin similarly asks for people to chip in with policy ideas. “The creative thing the Commissioner initiated last year was to ask a question, rather than lay down the law,” he said. “The website was my approximation of the Moedas gambit. Nobody can come along and say ‘you never asked me what I thought’.”

Madelin, one of the Commission’s most prolific users of Twitter, sees a future in crowdsourcing policy ideas. “I like doing it. Some of the responses teach you things.”

But he doubts the Commission has the resources right now to do it properly. “You get out what you put in. If you don’t create appetite, if you don’t make EU innovation policy the ‘new Justin Bieber of the Twittersphere’, then you won’t get 20 million followers,” he said. 

And perhaps it is a method best used sparingly anyway. “Decisions still have to be taken in a constitutionally determined way,” Madelin said. “You can’t do it for risk management or matters of peace and war.”

Keep EU open to new ideas

Madelin’s previous boss Neelie Kroes, former vice-president of the European Commission, was recently appointed to Uber’s new public policy board – a move which did not surprise him.

“One of the positive things Neelie did, which was a big departure, was to really open the Commission ecosystem to start-ups. So it is perfectly natural for me that somebody like Neelie is continuing to help innovative companies,” he said. In office, Kroes was an outspoken proponent of the car-booking service and memorably picked a fight with Belgian officials for banning the app.

Her appointment comes during a testing period for the EU’s relationship with big US tech companies. Uber is facing regular protests in European capitals; Facebook a cascade of privacy investigations in Europe; and Google is facing claims its Android operating system for smartphones and tablets is anti-competitive.

The EU must maintain a friendly face to new ideas, said Madelin. “A European venture capitalist said it in an article recently that if we want to succeed as innovators in Europe, we have to show the world we are open for innovators. So a pro-innovative stance is a strategic issue.”

Madelin’s post terminates after he hands in his report, so does he have a plan to move into industry? “For me, the idea officials should not cling to public service as the only way of life is something I’ve believed in for decades… so watch this space,” he said.