Europe is full of expertise. But how can we bridge the gap between experts and policymakers?

Europe is home to some of the world’s most highly educated populations, with EU member states consistently ranking among global leaders in tertiary education attainment and research output. Globally, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Germany lead the rankings for the number of PhD holders relative to population size (OECD, 2025). Yet despite this wealth of expertise, spanning healthcare, economic policy, artificial intelligence and beyond, parliaments across Europe continue to struggle to translate cutting-edge research into effective policy.

Systemic Challenges in Evidence-Informed Policymaking

The European Joint Research Centre identifies a persistent gap between “supply-side” organisations that generate research and “demand-side” stakeholders who use evidence in policy processes (Dorren et al., 2024). Several factors contribute to this rift: political actors tend to be generalists, often relying on intermediary sources to obtain scientific information (Apollonio and Bero, 2016). At the same time, managing complex policy challenges requires using interdisciplinary evidence that national administrations often lack the capacity to process (Dorren et al., 2024). Compounding this, policymakers and researchers often fail to “speak the same language” (defining problems differently and valuing different solutions), making the inclusion of scientific knowledge in policy processes structurally difficult (Sucha and Sienkiewicz, 2020).

As the OECD notes: “While evidence is often abundant, ensuring it is effectively used at the right time and in the right format remains a constant challenge.”

The challenges with creating evidence-based policy in Europe and beyond have wide-reaching impacts on policy efficacy and citizen trust in their government’s competency. Across OECD countries, only 41% of surveyed citizens believe that their governments use the best available evidence in decision-making, with low levels of trust in governments across Europe – according to the latest Eurobarometer survey, just 36% of Europeans say that they trust their national government (European Commission, 2025).

Science and policy are often seen as two different worlds operating under different regimes, and their separation prevents us from solving today’s complex problems (Sucha and Sienkiewicz, 2020). Overcoming these siloes requires “more contact, cooperation and co-creation”: closer links that put policymakers into consistent, high-value dialogue with current research, and that translate complex interdisciplinary findings into accessible, policy-aligned formats.

Designing a Curriculum with Expert-Policymaker Connections at the Forefront

The Policy Mission Fellowship’s curriculum was structured to address this silo directly by intentionally incorporating expert knowledge – building in the direct expert access that policymakers rarely have, and ensuring that research arrived in formats designed for non-specialists working on policymaking timelines. This year’s pilot iteration tackled the mission theme, “The Securitisation of Europe’s Economic Power”, and focused on the interdisciplinary challenges that Europe faces in maintaining its economic security in the 21st century. Throughout the course of the Fellowship, a diverse group of Fellows from across Europe were challenged to engage deeply with the subject’s challenges and create working policy prototypes to tackle them. 

So, how did we integrate expert-policymaker connections into the Policy Mission Fellowship curriculum?

LSE-led Workshops and Masterclasses
The first intensive in-person component of the Fellowship, the London Diagnostic Residency Week, was designed under the academic direction of leading academic institution, the London School of Economics. Fellows engaged in tailored workshops and Masterclasses, like a discussion on Security vs Economy on the limits of Europe’s Liberal Peace by LSE Professor Dr. James Morrison, an interactive simulation on Trade Wars, and panel discussions with resident experts on the topic, placing Fellows in direct dialogue with researchers.

Expert-Led Deep-Dives
The programme incorporated three expert-led deep dives on both technical and skills-based subjects. Fellows learned from and dialogued with subject-matter experts on topics from the EU’s Multiannual Financial Framework, to Tactics of Political Collaboration, to Policy Communication strategies, pushing Fellows to engage with expert perspectives at regular intervals of the curriculum.

Direct Hotlines to Expertise
Experts were deliberately present and available for Fellows during each phase of the curriculum. Fellows specialised into groups addressing a particular aspect of the mission theme, and were each assigned a resident subject-matter expert who was available to answer questions and deepen their understanding of the policy challenges. Fellows’ final policy prototypes were assessed and reviewed directly by European subject-matter experts to comment on each solutions’ feasibility and suggest improvements.

Tailored Research Packages
To help guide their policy prototype design work, each Fellow received a research package tailored to their specific policy focus, assembled by experts from some of Europe’s leading research institutions. These packages brought together current research on existing policies and international best practices into an accessible and policy-aligned format for policymakers working under time pressures, which Fellows drew on throughout the design process. Real-time consultation with these experts later enabled Fellows to receive specific feedback on aspects of their policy prototypes as they were being designed.

As the Policy Mission Fellowship works to shift how European policymakers engage with evidence, we are building spaces that create direct communication and feedback channels between policymakers and the researchers at the forefront of understanding Europe’s most pressing challenges.

Learn more about The Policy Mission Fellowship’s curriculum here: https://www.thepolicymissionfellowship.org/

References:

Apollonio, D.E. and Bero, L.A. (2016) ‘Challenges to generating evidence-informed policy and the role of systematic reviews and (perceived) conflicts of interest’, PLOS ONE. Available at: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5055062/

Dorren, L., Frequin, M., Meuleman, L., Pattyn, V. and Van der Steen, M. (2024) Building Capacity for Evidence-Informed Policymaking in Governance and Public Administration in a Post-Pandemic Europe, edited by Scharfbillig, M. and Smits, P. Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg. Available at: https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2760/5012478

European Commission (2025) ‘Eurobarometer shows record high trust in the EU, and strong support for the euro and a common defence and security policy’, press release, 27 May. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_1318

Šucha, V., Sienkiewicz, M., (2020) Science for Policy Handbook, ‘Against the Science-Policy Binary Separation’, edited by Vladimír Šucha and Marta Sienkiewicz. Joint Research Centre (JRC), Brussels. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/edited-volume/9780128225967/science-for-policy-handbook

OECD (2025) Education at a Glance 2025: OECD Indicators. OECD Publishing, Paris. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1787/1c0d9c79-en

OECD/European Commission (2025) Strengthening National Evidence-Informed Policymaking Ecosystems: Lessons from Seven European Countries. OECD Publishing, Paris. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1787/855c5286-en