Last month the EU Directorate-General for Research and Innovation published a report entitled “Options for Strengthening Responsible Research and Innovation: Report of the Expert Group on the State of Art in Europe on Responsible Research and Innovation”.

The report is meant to set out and discuss 4 possible policy option developments regarding the EU position on responsible research and innovation.

Chapter 1 and 2 are dedicated to identifying the problem and defining objectives, while chapter 3 offers 4 possible ways of proceeding.

Option 1 is business as usual, a continuation of present policy. Option 2 calls for improved business as usual through specific funding for responsible research and innovation. Option 3 calls for improved coordination with the member states without a legally binding framework. Option 4 calls for a legally binding framework.

After debating the pros and cons of each option in chapter 4, the authors compare the strategies in chapter 5. They go on to recommend option 3, but including several recommendations from option 2.

Chapter 6 outlines policy monitoring and evaluation. The first annex offers an interesting definition of RRI before moving on to examples of contested innovations, successful innovations and finally unattended fields.

The report is easy to read and available for free download here.

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(photo: Responsible Adult Behaviour by monojussi from Flickr)