Accumulating Political Ammunition

Abstract

This chapter discusses the European Research Area Expert Group on Research Infrastructures (henceforth, the ERA Research Infrastructures Group), a further expert group managed by DG Research. This expert group was created to provide advice on the development of a legal framework for prospective pan-European research infrastructures, which are defined as ‘facilities, resources and related services that are used by the scientific community to conduct top-level research in their respective fields [… that] may be “single-sited” or “distributed”’ (Commission of the European Communities, 2008c, recital 6).¹ The ERA Research Infrastructures Group therefore had a clearly defined and narrow mandate. Moreover, it was composed of only eight members. Accordingly, it was characterized by quite a different institutional setting to the other expert groups discussed so far, which were larger and had the broader mandate to provide advice on an entire policy sector.

The legal instrument would have been developed without this expert group, quite easily. But we were in the phase that we had some people thinking that although we can develop a legal tool, it is always good to have a consultation as wide as possible. So we took the opportunity that there was this expert group. (COM135:79)