No one will now bring scientific scrutiny to the political decisions of the Commission, the body at the heart of European policy-making that affects half a billion citizens across 28 nations. The most senior European regulators and law-makers no longer have a link to the evidence base of the European research community.

What announced was the termination of the Bureau of European Policy Advisers, which provided the commission’s president, commissioners and directors-general with strategic advice. The chief scientific adviser role was based within this body. The replacement body Juncker proposes – the European Political Strategy Centre – does not include a similar science post.

The chief scientific adviser, working with scant resources and a lack of clarity, has only ever been a single thread rather than the many ropes that were needed. But the creation of the role was a recognition by policy-makers that science and evidence are tools for making better, more accountable policies. It was an aspiration, one which followed a series of directives that made little sense and were full of unintended consequences.

Generosity of spirit

Our science advocacy group Sense About Science began pushing for this role at the start of 2009, following discussions with environment commissioner Janez Potočnik’s team how longer-term improvements in scientific input could be made and how to mistakes could be caught before they became policy – for example the commission’s which inadvertently threatened the use of MRI scanners vital to modern medicine in its attempt to set occupational limits on exposure to electromagnetic fields.

In 2010, Commission president José Manuel Barroso announced the creation of the role and the first chief scientific adviser took up the job in January 2012.

Yes, next to other big influences in European policy-making – such as the formidable resources of commercial public affairs activity – the adviser role has been tiny. When the incumbent, became the first and possibly only adviser, she was surprised to find that her team was smaller than the one she had when she was chief scientific adviser for Scotland.

However, she has said the support and generosity of spirit shown by the research communities across Europe has made her role workable, if still difficult. In fact, Glover inspired that generosity, so much so that after just three years the research world came to believe that contributing to European policy-making was part of their responsibilities.

In the face of European policy challenges in energy, food production, pest and disease control and much else, this was a huge step forward. What a wasteful and regrettable situation that the new commission has now taken this step backwards.

The groups – including Greenpeace – disagree with the advice that British professor of biology , the current CSA, has given to the commission on the issue of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

They told Juncker that the commission should take its advice “from a variety of independent, multidisciplinary sources with a focus on the public interest” and that Glover shouldn’t be listened to because hers is just one opinion.

Scientific consensus

No matter that Glover is herself advised by hundreds of European research organisations and the Joint Research Council, academies and learned societies from across the sciences and across the world, universities, expert committees, science associations and citizen science. No matter that her job is to independently assess the totality of evidence for questions the commission’s president asks her to answer. No matter that Glover has faithfully and accurately represented the strong scientific consensus on the safety of GMOs – that, in the words of a commission report, are “no more risky than conventional plant breeding technologies”.

This is a position supported by every major scientific institution in the world, and all the scientific academies of countries and regions, but denied by the anti-GMO lobby, which promotes its own alternative “consensus” of a small ragtag group of academics out on the fringes of the mainstream.

The groups describe the adviser’s role as “unaccountable, intransparent and controversial” but haven’t set out what they mean by that. Glover, who was formerly Scotland’s chief scientist, is the first person to hold the role of European chief scientific adviser. It was introduced by the outgoing president, José Manuel Barroso, to “provide independent expert advice on any aspect of science, technology and innovation as requested by the President”.

Reduce uncertainty

Barroso wanted to transform how European policy-makers use expert advice especially where there’s uncertainty and where policy-makers are trying to answer big questions society is facing. If those groups opposing this role have another way to ensure that evidence trumps lobbying clout when it comes to shaping and scrutinising policies then they should tell us what that is.

We signed a letter to Juncker yesterday along with other organisations and individuals who share a commitment to improving the evidence available to policy-makers. We want to make sure Juncker feels our outrage at any attempt to undermine the integrity and independence of scientific advice received at the highest level of the European Commission.

In polarised and divisive policy debates, as we have seen with climate change, it is all the more important that scientifically accurate and rigorous advice is given freely and without fear or favour. Policy-makers or lobbyists who seek to remove scientists because they don’t like their findings or advice do so at the peril of their citizens.