Putting Responsible Research and Innovation into Practice

Front matter

Vincent Blok Editor

Putting Responsible Research and Innovation into Practice

A Multi-Stakeholder Approach

Part I Responsible Research & Innovation as EU Policy The Drama of Responsible Research and Innovation

Erich Griessler, Robert Braun, Magdalena Wicher,

and Merve Yorulmaz

Stephanie Daimer, Hendrik Berghauser, and Ralf Lindner

Democratic Experimentation with Responsibility:

A Pragmatist Approach to Responsible Research

and MNMOVAON. «454554 1o5 GOES RE nieder EE ROKER REO eS 51 Joshua B. Cohen and Robert Gianni

Cultural Particularities and Its Role in the “Innovation Divide”:

A Closer Look at the Origins of “Spreading Excellence

Raúl Tabarés and Antonia Bierwirth

Joining Forces — Staying Unique: Adapting RRI to Different

Ulrich Schoisswohl, Ulrike Wunderle, Luboš Studený,

Lieke Michiels van Kessenich, and Pia Weinlinger

Vili Contents

Part II Public Engagement for Responsible Research & Innovation

7 Public Engagement in the Tradition of Participatory Philine Warnke, Tanja Bratan, and Ulrike Wunderle

Ilse Marschalek, Lisa M. Seebacher, Elisabeth Unterfrauner, Katharina Handler, and Margit Hofer

9 Exploring the Ambivalent Nature of Diversity in Social Experimental Settings: First Insights from Social Labs Merve Yorulmaz and Susanne Biihrer

10 Engaging Stakeholders by Implementing RRI in the Social Elisabeth Frankus and Helmut Honigmayer

Part III Governance of Responsible Research & Innovation

11 Implementing Responsible Research and Innovation: Anne Loeber, Michael J. Bernstein, and Mika Nieminen

12 Stakeholders in Research and Innovation: Towards Robert Braun and Johannes Starkbaum

13 Managing the Responsibilities of Doing Good and Avoiding Harm in Sustainability-Orientated Innovations: Example Thomas B. Long and Vincent Blok

14 Conclusion: Implementation of Responsible Research and Innovation by Social Labs. Lessons from the Micro-, Erich Griessler and Vincent Blok

About the Editor

Vincent Blok is associate professor in Philosophy of Technology and Responsible Innovation at the Philosophy Group, Wageningen University (The Netherlands). He is also director of the 4TU. Ethics Graduate School in The Netherlands. In 2005, he received his PhD degree in philosophy at Leiden University with a specialization in philosophy of technology. Together with seven PhD candidates and four Post-docs, he reflects on the meaning of disruptive technologies for the human condition and its environment from a continental philosophical perspective. His books include Ernst Jiinger’s Philosophy of Technology: Heidegger and the Poetics of the Anthropocene (Routledge, 2017), Heidegger’s Concept of Philosophical Method (Routledge, 2020), and The Critique of Management (Routledge, 2022). Blok published over hundred articles in high ranked philosophy journals like Environmental Values, Business Ethics Quarterly, Synthese, and Philosophy & Technology, and in multi-disciplinary journals like Science, Journal of Cleaner Production, Public understanding of Science, and Journal of Responsible Innovation. See www.vincentblok.nl for more information about his current research.

Chapter 1 A) Introduction Greek for Vincent Blok © and Lucien von Schomberg

After a period in which Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) stood as a cross-cutting issue under the Eigth European Union Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (R & I), Horizon 2020, its further development and implementation has reached a crossroad. It turned out that there is a lack of consistent integration of RRI in Europe’s R & I practices (Novitzky et al. 2020), and dedicated funding for RRI is almost entirely absent in the Ninth European Union Framework Programme for R & I, Horizon Europe. At the same time, global challenges like climate change become increasingly more urgent and thus continue to call for collective efforts of scientific research and industry, policy makers and civil society. Further, the emergence of disruptive technologies like synthetic biology, artificial intelligence and robotics raises several new societal concerns. Finally, the growing disbelief in science, as shown during the Corona pandemic, demonstrates the importance of aligning R & I policy and societal values all the more. For reasons as these, the disinvestment in a dedicated Science With and For Society programme line for RRI in Horizon Europe did not result in decreased academic attention for embedding science in society. On the contrary, a dedicated research community emerged that engages in the academic discourse of RRI and tries to contribute to projects on topics such as responsible data governance, responsible AI, and responsible agroecology within the Horizon Europe framework programme, sometimes even without the use of the frame RRI.

If RRI is to have a future in the European Commission’s Open Science Agenda and Horizon Europe Programme, it is important to focus on the implementation, institutionalization and management of responsibility in R & I practices. One of the

V. Blok (EX) Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands e-mail: vincent.blok @ wur.nl

L. von Schomberg Old Royal Naval College, London, UK

© The Author(s) 2023 1 V. Blok (ed.), Putting Responsible Research and Innovation into Practice,

2 V. Blok and L. von Schomberg weaknesses of the current academic discourse of RRI is its focus on conceptual and theoretical analysis. A variety of theories and approaches emerged under the heading of RRI, ranging from Value Sensitive Design to the six keys of RRI, all having their own ideals and barriers to reaching those ideals (Timmermans and Blok 2018). This makes the implementation and management of RRI an enormous challenge, leaving a discrepancy between the promoted ambitions of RRI and their realization in practice (Novitzky et al. 2020). This is also the case at the broader policy level, where RRI faces structural tensions with other policy goals, such as scientific excellence and economic value (Rodriguez 2019). Another weakness is that to this day the academic discourse of RRI is primary focused on the RRI research community itself, rather than on, for instance, the engineers and scientists who are actually working in the area of disruptive technologies . A final weakness is that the RRI research community mainly focusses on public research practices, while a significant amount of innovation practices take place in the private sector facing its own challenges and opportunities (Blok and Lemmens 2015). As long as the private sector context of R & I is not taken into account, the implementation and management of RRI will be difficult to align with the three goals for European R & I policy - Open science, open innovation, open to the world — to increase responsiveness of science to society (DGRI 2016).

The aim of this volume is to build on the great work that is already done by the RRI research community, and to engage professionals, practitioners and policymakers working outside the RRI research community to implement, institutionalize and manage responsibility in their R & I practices. We were able to engage this wider audience, including people working in science and industry, because the authors of this volume were involved in a large European Coordination and Support Action project that aimed to engage the European R & I community in the promotion and acceptance of RRI in all programme lines of Horizon 2020; Excellence in Science and Innovation for Europe by adopting the concept of Responsible Research and Innovation (NewHoRRIzon). After a diagnosis of the uptake of RRI in the various programme line of Horizon 2020 (Novitzky et al. 2020), the project worked out the conceptual and operational basis to fully integrate RRI into European and national (R & I) practice and funding. In order to accomplish this goal, the project established 18 Social Labs as inclusive methodology to implement and study RRI in all programme lines of H2020 (Timmermans et al. 2020). Together with a wideranging group of R & I stakeholders, these Social Labs co-created tailor-made pilot actions that stimulate an increase in the use and acceptance of RRI across H2020 and each of its programme lines. These pilot actions address a variety of R & I actors such as academia, business, non-university research institutes, research funding organisations, policy-makers on European, Member State and global level, civil society organisations (CSOs) and the general and specific public(s) as they arise from technological controversies. Using the social lab methodology, the authors contributing to this volume were able to benefit from the practical experience of this wider audience as a basis for further conceptual development and effective implementation of RRI in European and global R & I practices. Such a broad overview of evidence-based practices and experiences has not been employed in connection with RRI yet. The book highlights the potential of and opportunity in R & I to conduct R & I in a societally responsible way.

1.1 Synopsis and Overview of the Chapters

The book consists of three parts. The first part — Chaps. 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 — focusses on RRI as European policy concept, and how we can derive policy recommendations based on its current implementation, both at the EU level and the institutional level. The second part — Chaps. 7, 8, 9, and 10 — focusses on public engagement practices for RRI and pays particular attention to its operationalization in the social lab methodology. The third part — Chaps. 11, 12, and 13 — focusses on the governance of RRI, also in the setting of industrial research and innovation.

In Chap. 2, Erich Griessler, Robert Braun, Magdalena Wicher, and Merve Yorulmaz kick off with a general reflection on the ups and downs of the implementation of RRI in the EU. The chapter addresses the question of why RRI was facing problems in the European Commission to succeed as a policy concept for R & I, despite the Commission’s 20 years history of addressing science and society relations within its Framework Programmes. They highlight four interrelated elements that contribute to the instability of RRI as policy concept, namely conceptual, legal, financial, and institutional fragility. Based on Sabatier’s advocacy coalition approach, they explain how these elements of fragility developed and how the ups and downs of RRI as policy concept played out. They identify three advocacy coalitions with regard to RRI and analyse their belief systems and resources.

In Chap. 3, Stephanie Daimer, Hendrik Berghauser, and Ralf Lindner zoom in on the failure of mainstreaming RRI in EU policies for funding R & I. In order to better understand the reasons for the limited success of mainstreaming RRI, they draw on the concept of Deep Institutionalisation (DI) and adapt it to analyse institutionalisation processes related to policy practice and implementation. They analyse recent findings from RRI research with the help of an adapted DI concept. The results suggest that key preconditions for the successful institutionalisation of RRI policies were not fulfilled. Specifically, broader policy debates reaching beyond the confines of a small policy arena within the European Commission, a lack of experimental embedding allowing for adjustment to different contexts, and the development of ownership were not achieved. Building on the cornerstones of the DI concept, the authors conclude that attempts to mainstream RRI in H2020 have been premature.

In the Chap. 4 of part I, Joshua Cohen and Robert Gianni take the limited implementation of RRI in EU R & I practices as a basis to reflect on the normative potential of RRI. In their chapter, RRI is approached as a matter of collective democratic experimentation. They propose a pragmatist conceptualization inspired by John Dewey and show how his interest in social inquiring publics provide a particularly apt foothold from which to operationalize collective democratic experimentation with RRI. The utility of this approach is subsequently illustrated with the social labs methodology to experiment with RRI. Chapter 4 provides a conceptual argument

4 V. Blok and L. von Schomberg and heuristic as to how the current RRI implementation deadlock can be overcome. The reconceptualization of RRI in this chapter paves the way for the empirical chapters in the second part of the book.

After the first two chapters that focus on RRI as EU policy concept in general and the reconceptualization of RRI in Chap. 4, the next two chapters zoom in on two particular aspects. Chapter 5 concerns the involvement of new member states in Framework Programmes for R & I, and with this, their involvement in RRI projects. Chapter 6 concerns the institutionalization of RRI in national R & I funding agencies.

In Chap. 5, Raúl Tabarés Gutiérrez and Antonia Bierwirth consider the inclusion policies of new member states in R & I policies. They analyse the “innovation divide” between member states with high and with low participation rates in the European R & I Framework Programmes. This problem exists since the origins of the European Union but is especially pressing for the group of countries that entered the Union after 2004. Several initiatives have been implemented by the EU to encourage the participation of these countries in Framework Programmes for R & I, trying to maximize and extend the benefits of a knowledge economy across the EU. The authors explore how these instruments have been deployed in the Horizon 2020 Work Programme and focus on the origins of “Spreading Excellence and Widening Participation”. They identify specific weaknesses and pitfalls and argue that the innovation divide is not only a matter of adequate funding and provide recommendations for future implementation strategies.

In Chap. 6, Ulrich Schoisswohl, Ulrike Wunderle, Luboš Studený, Lieke Michiels van Kessenich, and Pia Weinlinger provide three case studies of two funding and one innovation agencies involved in RRI: the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO), the Austrian Promotion Agency (FFG), and the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic (TA CR). As part of the author team is working at these agencies, they are able to provide an in depth inside perspective on the matter of RRI implementation. They analyse how these funding and innovation agencies are already responding to the grand challenge-oriented R & I approach, how their activities can be linked to RRI and what additional insights could be gained from introducing RRI to agency practitioners. Their contribution provides insights in de facto RRI and the role of experimenting with RRI in funding agencies. Based on their findings, recommendations are provided on how the potential benefits of RRI at the EU level can be extended to the national funding and innovation agencies and their specific national R & I landscape.

Part I of this volume presents empirical evidence regarding the social lab methodology that is used to engage a wider audience of stakeholders in RRI. The chapters of part two move from more general accounts of stakeholder engagement and the social lab methodology to specific contributions on sectors like health and industry.

In Chap. 7, Philine Warnke, Tanja Bratan, and Ulrike Wunderle analyse public engagement in the tradition of participatory approaches. They investigate how the public engagement dimension of RRI could benefit from different research and practice traditions on participation in research and innovation that do not directly frame themselves as RRI. Based on an analysis of the participation literature, they identify four areas of theory and practice with major linkages to public engagement in RRI: Co-design, user-led innovation, participatory research, and systemic R & I policy instruments. They confront the specific contributions of these traditions with cases of RRI requirements in two specific fields: healthcare and environment. In this way, they explore barriers and challenges to public engagement and promising practices. This analysis is continued in Chap. 8. In this chapter, Ilse Marschalek, Lisa Marie Seebacher, Elisabeth Unterfrauner, Katharina Handler, and Margit Hofer explore the social lab methodology to operationalise public engagement for RRI and to mitigate some of the pitfalls of traditional public engagement formats. By using practical case studies, the authors show how social labs provide a fertile ground for the circular nature of public engagement within the context of RRI.

In Chap. 9, Merve Yorulmaz, and Susanne Biihrer zoom in on the particular notion of diversity in the social lab methodology for RRI. They investigate the relationship between participants’ diversity and the manifold outcomes produced in a social lab. Drawing on social network and critical mass theory, they show that social labs with greater diversity face more friction but produce more original, novel and innovative outcomes than more homogeneous groups. Based on quantitative data about the characteristics of social lab participants and outcomes, as well as qualitative information about group dynamics to describe the links between group diversity, their dynamics and outcomes, the authors show that the level of diversity does influence group behavior and the type of outcome that is to be expected. They also show that diversity requires conscious and deliberate management.

In Chap. 11, Elisabeth Frankus and Helmut Honigmayer explore how the social lab methodology can substantiate stakeholder engagement for RRI. They explore a single case study in the EURATOM research area to answer the question how the social lab methodology helps to integrate RRI and stakeholder engagement into the European R & I process.

Part III of this volume presents findings regarding the governance of RRI. In Chap. 11, Anne Loeber, Michael Bernstein and Mika Nieminen use another aspect of the social lab methodology. They concentrate on the use of pilot actions as social experiments with the implementation of RRI, reflect on how RRI was put into practice, and draw lessons about policy implementation in such complex governance settings. Social lab participants were invited to deliberate on the RRI policy goals, and to design and execute pilot actions to implement the policy in their context and related research (funding) practices. They consider these findings in light of the policy implementation literature and show how the policy goal of RRI, and its attendant normative orientation, exists in tension with the substantive focus (science governance) and administrative setting (the science funding system) of European Commission’s R & I. Finally, they reflect on alternative normative orientations and decentralized efforts to implement RRI.

In Chap. 12, Robert Braun and Johannes Starkbaum consider public engagement for RRI in light of recent developments in stakeholder theory in the strategic business context. It reflects on political Corporate Social Responsibility (pCSR) as conceptualization of responsible governance and develops a model for stakeholder

6 V. Blok and L. von Schomberg engagement in RRI on the basis of this material. The potential of the model is explored in two cases of co-creation exercises in which several stakeholders are involved. They draw conclusions regarding the operationalization of the normative ideals and social legitimation in R & I practices. With this perspective, the chapter also provides a bridge to Chap. 12 in which the industrial perspective on RRI is focused on.

Chapter 13 completely focuses on the industrial context of RRI. Thomas Long and Vincent Blok take the limited effect of EU R & I policies to implement RRI as point of departure to ask how responsible innovation can be pursed within industry settings. They explore how start-up firms manage the dual responsibilities of ‘doing good’ and ‘avoiding harm’. To this end, they collected data within the context of smart farming innovations that seek to tackle agri-food system challenges and identify several mechanisms to manage firm’s dual responsibilities.

In the final chapter, we draw conclusion by addressing the question what Social Labs can contribute to the implementation of RRI at a micro-, meso- and macro-level, and by reflecting on the role of RRI, and by reflecting on the progressive contribution RRI can make in contemporary debates on mission oriented research and innovation.

Blok, V., and P. Lemmens. 2015. The emerging concept of responsible innovation: Three reasons why it is questionable and calls for a radical transformation of the concept of innovation. In Responsible Innovation 2, ed. B.J. Koops, I. Oosterlaken, H. Romijn, T. Swierstra, and J. van den Hoven. Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-3 19-17308-5_2.

DGRI. 2016. Open Innovation, Open Science, Open to the World: A Vision for Europe (Directorate- General for Research and Innovation). Brussels: European Union.

Novitzky, P., M.J. Bernstein, V. Blok, R. Braun, T.T. Chan, W. Lamers, A. Loeber, I. Meyer, R. Lindner, and E. Griessler. 2020. Improve Alignment of Research Policy and Societal Values. Science 369 (6499): 39-41.

Rodriguez, H. 2019. Dynamics of Responsible Innovation Constitution in European Union Research Policy: Tensions, Possibilities and Constraints. In International Handbook on Responsible Innovation, ed. R. Von Schomberg and J. Hankins, 167-180. Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781784718862.00018.

Timmermans, Job, and Vincent Blok. 2018. A Critical Hermeneutic Reflection on the Paradigm- Level Assumptions Underlying Responsible Innovation. Synthese. https://doi.org/10.1007/ $11229-018-1839-z.

Timmermans, Job, Vincent Blok, Robert Braun, Renate Wesselink, and Rasmus @jvind Nielsen. 2020. Social Labs as an Inclusive Methodology to Implement and Study Social Change: The Case of Responsible Research and Innovation. Journal of Responsible Innovation 7 (3): 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1080/23299460.2020.1787751.

Vincent Blok is associate professor in Philosophy of Technology and Responsible Innovation at the Philosophy Group, Wageningen University (The Netherlands). He is also director of the 4TU. Ethics Graduate School in The Netherlands. In 2005 he received his PhD degree in philosophy at Leiden University with a specialization in philosophy of technology. Together with seven PhD candidates and four Post-docs, he reflects on the meaning of disruptive technologies for the human condition and its environment from a continental philosophical perspective. His books include Ernst Jiinger’s Philosophy of Technology. Heidegger and the Poetics of the Anthropocene (Routledge, 2017), Heidegger’s Concept of Philosophical Method (Routledge, 2020) and The Critique of Management (Routledge, 2022). Blok published over hundred articles in high ranked philosophy journals like Environmental Values, Business Ethics Quarterly, Synthese and Philosophy & Technology, and in multi-disciplinary journals like Science, Journal of Cleaner Production, Public understanding of Science and Journal of Responsible Innovation. See www.vincentblok.nl for more information about his current research.

Lucien von Schomberg is a lecturer in creativity and innovation at the University of Greenwich (UK). He studied philosophy at the KU Leuven (Belgium) with notable interest in existential phenomenology and traditional metaphysics. He is currently also finishing a PhD on the philosophy of responsible innovation at Wageningen University (Netherlands) and is editorial member of academic journals Philosophy of Management (UK) and NOvation: Critical Studies of Innovation (Canada). For more information, please visit www.lucienvonschomberg.com

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Chapter 2 A The Drama of Responsible Research crente; and Innovation: The Ups and Downs

of a Policy Concept

Erich Griessler ©, Robert Braun, Magdalena Wicher, and Merve Yorulmaz

Abstract This contribution addresses the question why Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is facing problems to succeed as concept for research and innovation policy in the European Commission, despite the EC’s 20 years of history of funding research activities and coordination and support actions that address science and society relations. Our analysis highlights four interrelated elements that contribute to the instability of RRI as policy concept, i.e. semantic, legal, financial and institutional fragility. We use Sabatier’s advocacy coalition approach (1998) to explain how these elements of fragility developed and how the ups and downs of RRI as policy concept played out. We identify three opposing advocacy coalitions with regards to RRI and analyze their belief systems and resources.

The European Union (EU) has been emphasizing for more than two decades the importance of citizen involvement in policy making (Commission of the European Communities 2001). The call for stronger citizen involvement extended also to research and innovation (R & I) policies. As a consequence, since the late 1990s the European Commission (EC) has supported in its successive “Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development” (FP) research-, innovation- and coordination activities that address the better alignment of science and society. The Commission promoted such activities already in FP5 (1998—2002) with the funding line “Ethical Legal and Social Aspects” (ELSA) of research (Zwart et al. 2014) and continued to do so between 2002 and 2006 in FP6 and from 2007 to 2013 in FP7 with the successive funding lines “Science in Society” and “Science

E. Griessler (4) - R. Braun - M. Wicher Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna, Austria e-mail: erich.griessler@ihs.ac.at

M. Yorulmaz Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI, Karlsruhe, Germany

© The Author(s) 2023 11 V. Blok (ed.), Putting Responsible Research and Innovation into Practice, and Society” (Owen et al. 2012). In the years from 2014 to 2020 the Commission operated in the FP Horizon 2020 (H2020) the funding line “Science in and with Society” (SwafS) and based its activities on the umbrella concept and cross cutting issue “Responsible Research and Innovation” (RRI). Despite this long tradition of funding activities to promote the alignment of science and society, the institutionalization of RRI in the EU is far from linear. On the contrary, in the current FP, Horizon Europe (HEU), which is planned to run from 2021 to 2028, the policy concept RRI is no longer mentioned as cross cutting issue and disappeared almost entirely from foundational legal texts (Meier and Byland 2020). Moreover, in contrast to H2020, a standalone programme for the promotion of RRI and a separate policy unit for its implementation ceased to exist.

In this chapter, we focus on the question why RRI struggled to become a widely accepted policy concept in EU R & I policies. Looking for answers we sketch the history of RRI in the EU R & I funding and explain the development of RRI by analyzing the conceptual, legal, financial and institutional status of RRI in the EC policy context. Outlining the essentials of Sabatier’s (1998) Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) relevant for our analysis we create a typology of three differing Advocacy Coalitions (AC). We analyse their composition, belief systems and resources to describe a fourfold fragility of RRI within the EC. We argue that the “Pro RRT’ AC was divided and unable to establish RRI as a long-lasting policy concept and failed to prevail against the disapproval or indifference of competing ACs who either rejected RRI altogether or favored alternative concepts. We also describe a series of compromises the “Pro RRT” AC in the EC have struck to accommodate internal and external critics. At the end of the chapter, we briefly reflect on openings and potential strategies to rescue RRI as a formative and implementable policy concept within the EC funding framework.

For this contribution we mainly use peer reviewed publications, grey literature and policy documents on the history and development of the RRI concept. In this respect, we distinguish several strands of work. A substantial part of the literature and documents focuses on the genesis and development of RRI as an academic concept (e.g., Rip 2014; Felt 2018; Timmermans and Blok 2018; Owen and Pansera 2019a, b). In addition, there is literature on “de-facto-RRI” (e.g., Randles 2017). This concept indicates initiatives which sail under different flags than RRI - e.g., gender equality, bioethics, corporate social responsibility, (participatory) technology assessment — but cover overlapping territories. Another corpus of literature relates to predecessors of the SwafS programme (e.g., Zwart et al. 2014), the research projects they supported (European Commission 2020), the uptake of RRI in H2020 as cross cutting issue (Novitzky et al. 2020) and RRI policies and practices in EU Member States (Mejlgaard et al. 2019; Christensen et al. 2020). A small section of the literature deals with the question of how RRI was institutionalized as a policy concept; in other words, with the politicking and struggles in European bureaucracy (Rip 2014, 2016; Owen et al. 2012; Macq et al. 2020; Meier and Byland 2020; Strand and Spaapen 2021). For this article we combined the aforementioned strands of literature to better understand the challenges “institutional entrepreneurs” (Randles 2017: 16) encountered within and outside the EC when they tried to institutionalize RRI in the

2 The Drama of Responsible Research and Innovation: The Ups and Downs of... 13

European FP. We complement this literature with our reflections and experiences gained from participating in many RRI project since 2014.!

2.2 Short History of RRI

Within the EC, the policy concept of RRI and its predecessors is a response to a legitimation crisis of R & I policy making in the aftermath of major public controversies about, e.g., genetically modified organisms and mad cow disease (Macq et al. 2020). First foundations for RRI as a concept were laid early in the millennium with the White Paper on European Governance (Commission of the European Communities 2001). This document called for a “scientific reference system” in order to support policy making by “structured and open networks” (ibid. 19) through participation and access to reliable information. The paper strongly advocated public participation in policy making and stated that the “[L]legitimacy [of the EU] today depends on involvement and participation” (ibid. 19). In 2001, the EC set up the Science and Society Action Plan (EC 2002), in which the connection between science and citizens was key and active participation was seen as two-way communication. This was meant to not only informing people, but also letting them actively take part and express their views. As a consequence, in 2002, the funding programme “Science and Society” (SaS) was introduced in the FP6.

In this line of reasoning, participation is key for policy making. In 2003, a report on governance within the EU emphasized the powerful role of citizen participation and how to include them in governance and in offering policy recommendations. The rationale was to strengthen the interface between science and policy making and encourage active participation of society at large in policy making (Banthien et al. 2003). It was not only the idea of a responsible R & I system, but there were general debates within the EU about changing governance and policy as well as the legal system towards increasing the rights of and creating more openness towards citizens. So, the needs of bringing research closer to society, understanding and shaping governance in a way that policy decisions are more connected to societal needs and to making research and the applications of science and technology more democratic and responsible, were the main attempts that constituted the basic ideas of RRI.

A step towards citizen inclusion in policy making was the Lisbon Treaty — signed in 2007 and entered into force in 2009 — which contained ideas of the aforementioned White Paper. Article 8 places citizen participation, engagement, transparency and involvement at the core of participatory democracy (Official Journal of the European Union 2007). These principles were integrated in FP7, in which the