The Royal Society’s MEP-scientist pairing scheme enables members of the European Parliament and scientists to visit and observe each other at work. It aims to make scientists more aware of policy making at the European level, and parliamentarians gain more insight of the scientific process.

Formulating and approving policies

Mark Enright understands more

I was pleased to be paired with John Bowis, Conservative MEP for London, as only a small amount of background research revealed him to be very active in the area of public health policy in the European parliament and a former UK government health minister.

My laboratory group is trying to understand the mechanisms that produce increasingly aggressive and antibiotic resistant types of MRSA and how these spread at hospital, national and international level.

Healthcare policy in this area has a direct and measurable effect on morbidity and mortality, yet many interventions in the area of infection control lack a strong scientific base. Many such studies are poorly designed or their results are poorly communicated leaving their results open to misinterpretation.

Busy schedule

The draft timetable of my visit to Brussels appeared complex because, as well as spending time with the MEPs, myself and five other UK scientists were scheduled to meet with representatives of the European parliament, commission and council, NGOs and several other bodies.

The meetings were on the whole interesting and informative. I now have some understanding of how policies are formulated and approved by the European institutions – informed at several levels by inputs from the scientific community.

My visits to the European Parliament and with MEPs demonstrated the personal interest that the MEPs I met have in the policies that they help shape. John Bowis for example is currently helping develop new policies in the area of mental health and in the past his committee helped establish the new European Centre for Disease Control and food safety standards.

Consensus

Most MEPs, in common with most scientists, have a low public profile. However, in attending sessions of the Parliament, committees and press conferences I could see how busy their working lives are, as they go from meeting to meeting discussing policies and amendments, voting on them and then communicating them through the media.

My main impression of the political processes is of consensus – in my short time there I could see how MEPs of different countries and parties engaged in thorough debates informed, on occasion, by eminent scientists.

Framework Programme 7

Having spent a very busy week in Brussels in January 2005 evaluating grant applications under the European Framework programme 6 (FP6), I was interested in hearing about how the EU was going to allocate its research budget over the next five years under FP7. In my personal experience applying for European funding is a long and bureaucratically arduous journey that makes applying to UK research councils seem straightforward.

In meetings with Directorate General Research officials, we were told of sizeable increases in the budget available to European scientists and for the first time the availability of funds based solely on the scientific merit of proposals. Previous programmes have had to satisfy other criteria such as capacity building and interactions with business; but this new initiative is designed to stimulate research at a globally competitive level.

More money is also being allocated to increase mobility of scientists between member states. I am a keen advocate of this, having had two successful visits from Marie-Curie visiting scientists. This scheme enables collaborating laboratories to exchange pre- and postdoctoral scientists, helping strengthen links between researchers in different countries and resulting in a broadening of the experience of the young scientists involved – something that can only be good in the next generation of senior scientists.

More time

Informing policy makers and the public about the best science is important if government initiatives are to be successful and the Royal Society and other scientific bodies have a major role to play here.

The exchange was a worthwhile exercise from my point of view although I would have liked to have seen more of how MEPs work on a day to day basis. When John visits my laboratory at Imperial and when I meet him in his constituency I hope we can expand on the all too brief meetings we managed in Brussels.
I hope in future that such exchanges continue, as politicians and scientists should interact frequently to ensure that sound legislation can be based on the best and most recent scientific research.

Dr Mark C. Enright is Reader in Molecular Epidemiology, Imperial College and Royal Society University Research Fellow.