The Transparency of EU Agency Science – Towards a new proactive approach post-Covid19

There is broad agreement about the normative value of transparency when it comes to agency science, i.e. the scientific information that underpins, and often significantly shapes, public regulation. Transparency of agency science is seen as crucial in securing the legitimacy of and trust in EU risk regulation. Yet, how exactly transparent scientific advice for policy should look like in practice and what role law plays in this regard is much more disputed. In this paper, we analyse recent EU legal and regulatory developments concerning access to information held by the three most important risk regulation agencies, the European Medicines Agency, the European Food Safety Authority, and the European Chemicals Agency. Our main finding is that the current EU legal approach to the transparency of agency science is undergoing significant change as a result of both legislative change, agency practice and recent developments of Covid19 pandemic management. The traditional ‘passive’ approach based on access rights under the EU Access Regulation is fragmented, and suffers from several shortcomings which require urgent legislative reform as well as judicial rethinking. Recent trends, such as the 2021 reform of the EU General Food Law, indicate that the EU is moving towards a new approach of ‘proactive transparency,’ which is better suited to address the challenges of risk regulation and crisis management.