French Launch Event for "Understanding our Political Nature"

Join the virtual launch event with prominent French speakers from academia and policymaking discussing the question: How do we ensure sound political decision-making that takes into account scientific evidence in times of high political and societal pressure? The discussion will revolve around the JRC’s report “Understanding our political nature”, now available in French.

Webstreaming

The session will take place from 11:30 to 13:00 hrs (CET) and will be webstreamed live, please follow this link: https://webcast.ec.europa.eu/understanding-our-political-nature-france-18-06-21

Key topics of the report

• Misperception and Disinformation
• Collective Intelligence
• Emotions
• Values and Identities
• Framing, Metaphor and Narrative
• Trust and Openness
• Evidence-informed policymaking

Speakers

• Baudouin Baudru (Head of EC Representation, Paris)

• Professor Kalypso Nicolaidis ( Chair in International Affairs, School of Transnational Governance, EUI) (Moderator)

• Professor Cédric Villani (Member of the French Parliament & Vice President of the French Parliamentary Office for the Evaluation of Scientific and Technological Choices)

• Pierre Larrouturou (Member of the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament)

• Hugo Mercier (Researcher at the Jean Nicod Institute, ENS, PSL, CNRS, Paris)

• Patrick Flammarion (Deputy Director General of Expertise and Support for Public Policy at Institut national de la recherche pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement)

• Laura Smillie (Leading European Commission’s Enlightenment 2.0 research programme)

Short agenda

• 10’ Welcome and introduction from the national co-host, national relevance scene-setting (EU Rep)
• 20’ Presentation of the report & Enlightenment 2.0 research programme (JRC)
• 30’ Panel – Introduction & 3 x 7 minute intervention from each panellist
• 30’ Q&A session – mixture of moderator Qs & interactive with participants

Background

The pandemic has shown that the idea of evidence-informed policymaking is threatened. We have realised how susceptible we are to being misled and that political decisions are sometimes determined by factors which are not yet properly understood.

Upon the publication of this report in French, Mariya Gabriel, Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, said: “Science and evidence are at the heart of the actions we are taking to build a greener, fairer and more digital Europe that’s fit to face the challenges of the future. But we cannot take that for granted. The Joint Research Centre is helping us to better understand the drivers behind political behaviour and decision-making, so we can make sure that policy choices are made with the best available evidence, benefiting everyone in Europe.”

While the original report was published in 2019, the pandemic has given renewed relevance to many of the issues discussed. This is why the report has been translated into German, French, Spanish and Italian. For each of the countries, the JRC is organising a launch event. After the events, the translated reports will be published on this website.

Contact

In case of questions, please contact the JRC via JRC-ENLIGHTENMENT2ec [dot] europa [dot] eu (JRC-ENLIGHTENMENT2[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu)

For media enquiries please email JRC-PRESSec [dot] europa [dot] eu (JRC-PRESS[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu)

Related Content

Understanding our political nature

Venue

Online, EU