Abstract
It is common to assume that increasing expertisation in and around the executive branch of government is accompanied by de-politicisation. Both developments pose a potential threat to the role of institutions that run on a political logic. Not only because they tend to be generalists rather than experts, it also undermines their authority by removing political debates from the public sphere and curtailing the breadth of opinions that could and should enter into such discussions. This investigates these issues in the context of the European Union (EU). The main EU executive, the Commission, is a body of technocrats, on which the directly elected European Parliament (EP) is heavily dependent on for information and expertise. There are, however, indications that the EP is attempting to bolster its own supply of expertise. First, it has recently established its own “in-house research department and think tank” – the EP Research Service. Secondly, and on some issues more than others, it assembles external expertise, for example through commissioned studies and committee hearings. Thus, this paper asks: What kind of expertise does the EP seek, from whom and when? Does it tend to gather external expertise on particular technical issues or rather on the more salient ones? Does it pursue technocratic input, or breadth of opinion? Focusing on these questions, this paper adds to the debate on whether and how parliaments compensate for being generalists.
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