Synthesizing and communicating evidence for climate policies to European policy-makers

The European Parliament has been a major actor in defining policies to achieve climate neutrality, notably with the adoption of the European Climate Law and the ‘Fit for 55’ package. In 2020, the European Parliament Research Service (EPRS) established a Climate Action Research and Tracking Service with the task to synthesize and communicate evidence for climate policies to the Members of the European Parliament. The service aims to provide authoritative, objective and unbiased information and analysis to the political decision-makers, in clear language and supported by graphs and infographics. This should enable policy-makers to make well-informed decisions on highly technical legislative proposals in the area of climate action – “empowering by knowledge”.
Our approach is to provide evidence from different perspectives (scientific, technological, economic, social, legal, political), drawing on a variety of sources including IPCC and other assessment reports, peer-reviewed publications, Eurostat and other statistical sources, think tank and industry publications, European Commission’s impact assessment and other modelling studies, opinion surveys.
Our output consists of publicly available studies, briefing papers and infographics, and confidential in-person briefings and replies to individual information requests. We produced a series of publications on climate action performance and strategies of the EU, each Member State, and major economies outside of Europe.
We encountered the following challenges in communicating scientific/economic evidence to decision-makers, who often have limited time and attention span:
– Communicate risk, probability and uncertainty in a clear manner
– Simplify complex concepts to make them understandable, but avoiding inaccurate or misleading statements
– Selecting the most relevant facts and data points to communicate
As the Parliament has the powers to amend legislative proposals in the area of climate action, there is an unmet need for evidence regarding the expected impacts of such amendments on GHG emissions, employment and competitiveness.