Open letter to the President-elect of the European Commission

The letter argues that the Chief Scientific Adviser (CSA) role concentrates too much influence in one person, lacks transparency, and is susceptible to corporate lobbying, urging the President-elect of the European Commission to seek more diverse and objective scientific expertise.

• The authors contend that the Chief Scientific Adviser (CSA) position is fundamentally flawed because it concentrates excessive influence in a single individual, which in turn undermines the comprehensive scientific research and assessments conducted by Commission directorates during policy development.
• The document asserts that the CSA role facilitates the influence of corporate lobbyists because the adviser is not required to publish the advice provided to the President, and the current CSA has expressed that her advice should remain immune from public scrutiny and not transparent.
• The authors argue that the European Commission's primary issue is not a lack of scientific evidence, but rather an inconsistency in how it responds to evidence provided by its own services, a problem they claim the CSA position failed to resolve.
• The letter notes that the full-time government CSA model is rare within the EU; of the three countries that had established such a post—the UK, Ireland, and Czech Republic—two have recently abandoned it, leaving only the UK.

APA

Center for International Environmental Law (2014). Open letter to the President-elect of the European Commission. https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/EC_SciAdvisor_19Aug2014.pdf

Chicago

Center for International Environmental Law. Open letter to the President-elect of the European Commission. 2014. https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/EC_SciAdvisor_19Aug2014.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite press release |author=Center for International Environmental Law |title=Open letter to the President-elect of the European Commission |date=19 August 2014 |url=https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/EC_SciAdvisor_19Aug2014.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@misc{centerforinternationalenvironmentallaw2014open, author = {{Center for International Environmental Law}}, title = {{Open letter to the President-elect of the European Commission}}, publisher = {Center for International Environmental Law}, year = {2014}, month = aug, url = {https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/EC_SciAdvisor_19Aug2014.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }