As a first takeaway from the seminar, it can be noted that when it comes to complex policy areas such as the climate crisis, health, and new technologies, the EU relies heavily on expertise. Seemingly, expertise is a good means to circumvent convoluted political debates. After all, if the science is clear on what needs to be done, there is no need to open this up to contestation. This approach is particularly visible in environmental policymaking, where science-based targets have become the standard. However, while science might provide relatively clear numbers on CO2-emission reduction or how large the population of a certain species needs to be to avoid ecosystem disruption, expertise cannot unequivocally tell us how to get there. As Maria Lee noted in the first panel, this reliance on targets has led to a tendency to perceive procedures as inconvenient, because ‘science already shows us what to do’. However, this approach fails to acknowledge the normative questions of environmental policy, the fallibility of expert knowledge, and the role of the public in generating democratic outcomes. Especially climate policy deals with important political questions: which economic activities should be downscaled, which types of renewable energy should we invest in, who pays for the damages of the energy transition, and how do we distribute the costs of decarbonization? Even though climate science is more than clear and agreed on the need for decarbonization and biodiversity protection, it cannot give an unequivocal answer as to how. In other words, as important as expertise is to streamline and guide policymaking, it cannot take the politics out of policymaking by pretending that expert knowledge provides all the answers. Expertise cannot and should not be used to circumvent political questions, as complex as answering those questions might be.

While expertise is essential for high-quality policy, the seminar flagged the need for strong alternative sources of democratic legitimacy, in particular reliable opportunities for public contestation, participation, and scrutiny. Transparency alone is unlikely to be sufficient as noted by Vigjilenca Abazi, procedural transparency might grant passive access to expertise, but it does not empower disempowered voices to contest policy. Especially in environmental decision-making, the participation of the public has a long tradition based on international human rights, for example through the Aarhus Convention. Might citizen participation be able to counterbalance the use of expertise by providing public scrutiny and reopening the floor for contestation and political questions? The devil is in the details – or more specifically, the implementation details. Even when the legal opportunity to contest and participate is there, meaningful participation of the public depends on a multitude of factors, including political engagement and knowledge of the public, socio-economic circumstances that might hinder marginalized communities from participating, and trust in the relevant political institutions. Furthermore, a myriad of citizen participation procedures exists – from the more traditional consultation rounds to deliberative citizens’ assemblies, that intensively immerse participants in the substance of the decision and focus on building agreeable solutions. These procedures can be aimed at a variety of objectives, from expressing democratic rights to improving quality decision-making. Nevertheless, legal opportunities to participate, and a commitment of policymakers thereto, are essential preconditions to generate a conversation between expertise and the public.

An important aspect of the debate on the place of expert knowledge in EU regulatory action is the role of legal experts. What counts as ‘legal expertise’, who can be regarded as a legal expert, and how does legal expertise differ from other types of expertise? What is the role of legal experts in democratic processes? In her keynote, Paivi Leino-Sandberg underlined that such seemingly simple questions do not give rise to straightforward answers. Throughout the EU policy-making apparatus, legal actors are ubiquitous, integrated across the EU’s technocratic decision-making processes and policy fields. These legal actors take on distinct roles and positions as experts of the law, from academics, interest representatives, or practitioners outside the EU institutions to those legal practitioners working within the policy-making apparatus, at Member State or EU level. In all of those roles, legal experts’ impact on EU regulatory action is vast. Legal experts perform an essential democratic function. They shed light on the legal context and meaning of an issue, be that of climate change, the regulation of AI, or migration, and give highly necessary insights into possible legal solutions and the extent of the flexibility of the law, allowing room for a range of valid policy options to tackle a certain societal issue. It is within this function as ‘the one who reads and interprets the law’ that a legal expert’s true impact lies. The law is incredibly flexible, and immense power is involved in the practice of interpretation. Sometimes, different ‘readings’ are really just that: a reading, with every reading being a choice that brings about risks and consequences for EU policymaking. As eloquently explained by Leino-Sandberg, legal experts in the EU institutions have no monopoly on reading the law but they do hold a critical institutional position crucial to EU democracy. Through the power of legal interpretation, the meaning of law can easily be framed – and reframed – in political processes, and in this lies a greater risk of political responsibility being outsourced to the lawyer.

Related to this aspect is the question of (im)partiality and the mistakenly perceived ‘neutrality’ of expert knowledge when used in a political context. Legal experts are subject to different standards, depending on their role: one may expect academics to take a more neutral position, while legal practitioners are to be partial to the interests of their clients. A legal expert’s task is to find flexibility in the law where needed and in doing so, the focus lies on the interest of the client, be that an EU institution or rather a private actor asking for legal advice. The EU integration project exemplifies this focus in a particular manner, as Leino-Sandberg demonstrated: the inherent purpose of institutional legal experts in the EU institutions is to move EU integration forward, their task being to remove legal obstacles that hamper this cause. If EU treaties constrain the range of possible actions too much, EU legislators need the flexibility to be able to offer pragmatic solutions, and this is where legal experts come in.

Connecting the discussions back to the broader purpose of the RED-SPINEL project and current rule of law debate, the focus of the seminar lies on rule of law adherence in and by the EU institutions: on the very stability of the EU institutional framework. Transparent decision-making is essential to this. The lack of transparency in how legal questions are handled in the EU institutions renders political control increasingly difficult. If untransparent reliance on (legal) expertise allows for politics to take a detour in accountability, this may very well undermine democratic legitimacy.