European Parliamentary Research Service

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 1st of November 2013, the European Parliamentary Research Service became a new directorate-general within the European Parliament's permanent administration. The EPRS was conceived as something the Parliament had long lacked. Its purpose was to give elected members independent, objective analysis of EU policy from a single, dedicated source. Klaus Welle, then the Parliament's Secretary-General, drove the initiative forward. A Joint Working Group of the Parliament's Bureau and Budgets Committee had examined how members received research support. It found the existing arrangement scattered across departments with little connection to one another. The questions that new service was built to answer are not abstract. What does a proposed EU regulation actually do, and what are its likely effects? Has a law already in force delivered what it was meant to deliver? And how should an elected chamber hold executive bodies to account at every stage of the policy cycle? The new body drew together services that had previously reported to entirely different parts of the Parliament. The ambition, from the start, was to accomplish this in a budget-neutral way.

• 2. Three Parts, One Body

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  Anthony Teasdale became the EPRS's first Director-General, inheriting a structure assembled from three distinct parts. The Directorate for the Library arrived from DG Presidency, where it had sat alongside security services and lawyer-linguists. The Directorate for Impact Assessment and European Added Value came from DG Internal Policies, where it had operated as a separate unit. These two directorates, once brought together, formed the analytical foundation of the new service. Alongside them stood something entirely new: the Members' Research Service, a directorate the Parliament had previously been without. It was built in response to the finding that independent scientific advice to elected members needed to be enhanced. A second aim was to give elected members better tools for scrutinising and overseeing the European Commission and other executive bodies. That mandate extends across every stage of the EU policy cycle. The body that resulted spans four directorates and five horizontal units, with Anders Rasmussen serving today as its Director-General.

• 3. Research at Every Stage

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  The Members' Hotline gives any Member of the European Parliament a single point of contact for the full range of EPRS services. Requests can arrive at any time and may concern any EU policy, issue, or piece of legislation, from any MEP or their staff. The response takes different forms depending on what is needed. A short note serves quick orientation; a detailed briefing handles more complex questions; a full study goes deeper still. Beyond individual requests, the EPRS also publishes proactively on topics it judges important for members to understand. One of its most systematic tools is the 'EU Legislation in Progress' series. It tracks every significant legislative proposal through each stage of the EU procedure. Each briefing in the series covers a proposal's purpose, content, and legal dimensions. It also surveys prior legislation and the views of national parliaments. The opinions of the European Committee of the Regions and the European Economic and Social Committee are included as well. The Members' Research Service is organised into six policy units: economic, structural, citizens', budgetary, digital, and external policies. The EPRS extended its reach beyond the Parliament's own membership. It built services for ordinary European citizens who wanted to understand the EU's effect on their daily lives.

• 4. Open to All

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  In 2019, the European Ombudsman named the EPRS a winner of its Award for Good Administration, in the category of excellence in communications. The award recognized 'What Europe Does For Me', an interactive, multilingual website presenting hundreds of one-page notes. Each note shows how EU decisions affect a specific region, profession, or area of daily life. A separate service called AskEP handles direct enquiries from the public about the Parliament and its views on EU issues. All publications produced by the EPRS are freely available to the general public. The Library and Knowledge Services directorate operates physical reading rooms in both Brussels and Strasbourg. It houses the Parliament's physical and digital collection and provides online access to subscription databases across the institution. The European Parliament History Service sits within this directorate. It publishes studies on the Parliament's development as a political institution and on the EU's broader evolution, drawing on archives held by both. The Directorate for Impact Assessment and European Added Value addresses a different analytical challenge within the EPRS. It centres on the European Commission and the broader executive machinery the Parliament is tasked with overseeing.

• 5. Scrutiny and Oversight

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  Five units make up the Directorate for Impact Assessment and European Added Value, each assigned to a distinct analytical function. Two functions are particularly central to the directorate's work. Ex-ante assessment analyses the likely consequences of proposed legislation before it passes. Ex-post evaluation measures what laws have actually delivered once they have been in force. One of the five units is dedicated to oversight of the European Council. Another monitors the European Commission's own ex-post evaluations, giving the Parliament an independent check on the executive's self-assessments. The Scrutiny Toolbox helps members and their staff track review clauses in EU legislation and international agreements. It also lets them find out about Commission evaluations of existing laws and follow the work of the European Court of Auditors. Specialist monitoring services within the directorate track EU climate action goals and follow the Next Generation EU recovery fund. The EPRS also hosts a dedicated panel of elected members whose focus is the impact of emerging technologies. That function sits at the boundary between parliamentary work and scientific expertise.

• 6. Science, Technology, and Twenty-Seven Seats

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  Twenty-seven Members of the European Parliament sit on STOA, the Panel for the Future of Science and Technology. Its mandate is to carry out expert, independent assessments of how new technologies might affect society. It also identifies long-term strategic policy options for the Parliament's committees. All of STOA's work is done in partnership with external specialists. Six of those twenty-seven seats belong to the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy. Three seats each are assigned to committees on Environment and Public Health, Internal Market, Employment and Social Affairs, Transport and Tourism, and Agriculture. Those five committees together account for fifteen of the panel's seats. A further five committees hold one seat each, including Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, Legal Affairs, and Culture and Education. The Scientific Foresight Unit within Directorate B of the EPRS carries out the analytical work that feeds into STOA's assessments. Elsewhere in the EPRS, the Strategic Foresight and Capabilities Unit coordinates analytical work on EU risks, vulnerabilities, and capability gaps. Its purpose is to promote a higher degree of resilience and strategic autonomy for the Parliament and the institutions it works with.