ALBERT

Description: Crises like climate change, the recent pandemic and the war in Ukraine have a profound effect on all of us. Crises are growing in number, severity and complexity, and at an accelerating pace. The connectedness of European societies increases their vulnerability, and today’s crises have multiple cascading and rippling effects that can extend to all parts of society, the economy and environment. The need for effective strategic crisis management is evident and, given the increasingly transboundary nature of crises, the EU has emerged as an important player. Crisis management can be highly sectoral and not always geared to effective performance over the long term, especially when crises become protracted. The consequences of failed or ineffective crisis management can be severe, with rising inequalities and negative impacts such as political fragmentation, societal polarisation and economic disruption. Recent crises have illustrated starkly the need for preparation, improved capacity and resources. This Evidence Review Report is designed to address issues described in the scoping paper,1 which sets out the formal request for advice from the European College of Commissioners to the Group of Chief Scientific Advisors to the European Commission. This report synthesises the evidence in response to the main question from the scoping paper: Based on a broad and multidisciplinary understanding, how can the EU improve its strategic crisis management? This report focuses on the strategic level, involving those decision-makers and policymakers who are responsible and accountable for the outcome of a crisis. During the response phase in particular, strategic issues are often neglected because of the urgent need to act and react. For a response to be effective, it is essential to develop rapid decision-making capabilities and appropriate resources. Although crises are all different in terms of their type, duration and governance arrangements, there are underlying principles that are common to their management. This report identifies fundamental generic principles and frameworks that relate to the roles played by the EU in strategic crisis management. It provides concrete examples of past and ongoing crises, reflecting on trends and developments in the field. Importantly, it embeds strategic crisis management within the context of risk and resilience.

Description: The report highlights the fact that many of the world’s most pressing problems are also incredibly complex — including climate change, environmental pollution, economic crises and the digital transformation of societies. What’s more, the scientific knowledge around these areas can often be uncertain or contested. Science is one of many sources of knowledge that inform policy. Its unique strength is that it is based on rigorous enquiry, continuous analysis and debate, providing a set of evidence that can be respected as valid, relevant and reliable. Science advice supports effective policymaking by providing the best available knowledge, which can then be used to understand a specific problem, generate and evaluate policy options and monitor results of policy implementation. It also provides meaning to the discussion around critical topics within society. The advice works best when it is guided by the ideal of co-creation of knowledge and policy options between scientists and policymakers. The relationship between science advisers and policymakers relies on building mutual trust, where both scientists and policymakers are honest about their values and goals. Scientific knowledge should always inform societal debate and decision-making. Citizens often have their own experiences of the policy issue under consideration and should be included in the ongoing process of deliberation between scientists, policymakers and the public.

Description: All stakeholders, and perhaps especially the public, should acknowledge that sustainable management of complex public risk is always going to be a matter of judgement. Such judgements will always face challenges of uncertainty and controversy and, while there are legitimate questions to be asked about who should make the decision and the effectiveness of their chosen approaches, it is central that decision makers receive a clear mandate and appropriate political support and trust. The concepts discussed encourage approaches to risk that permit it to be intelligently understood and managed. They are intended to foster appropriate approaches to risk decision making by those in authority, to ensure that decision making is proportionate, ethical, fair and trusted, and perceived to be so by those on whose behalf the decisions are made. It is useful to distinguish ‘how the public thinks about risk’ and ‘how public risk perception and choices are thought about by authority’, and both deserve critical scrutiny. Public pressure around environmental risk has promoted a more balanced conception that recognizes decisions are not based only on formalised knowledge about likely impacts and that it is necessary to think more broadly about ways to implement sustainable management actions. However, a similar approach is lacking in other areas, such as lifestyle risk. Cross fertilisation of good practice between different areas will be important for future improvement. It is necessary to achieve a balance between placing greater emphasis upon the contextual logic of public risk choices whilst also promoting the insight available from scientific inquiries based on data acquisition, statistical analysis and probability theory. Ten principles have been developed to address a number of important issues that have arisen from a wide-ranging evaluation of contemporary successes and failures in public risk interventions. The first four principles are intended to guide decision makers on ways to utilise insights into risk concepts in making policy decisions. Principles 5-8 relate to improving the quality of risk analysis and numbers 9 and 10 are suggestions for helping the public to make better risk decisions for themselves. Finally, an additional principle, number 11, acknowledges that we live in a dynamic world and reminds policy makers that this includes a need to respond to developments in approaches to the consideration and management of risk.