European Research Programmes

The contribution discusses the development of post-Second World War (WWII) European integration and its development of an extended research policy on supranational level. In the context of research on knowledge communities it follows the question of how a specific logic of knowledge community creation has unfolded in the context of the European integration process after WWII. By applying tools from multi-level governance analysis the contribution analyses the evolvement of European research policy from EURATOM to the recent development of a “European Research Area” and an “Innovation Union”. It traces the origin, direction and intention of attemps of community building in the context of European integration in order to critically discuss the hypothesis that (1) research is understood in the context of European integration as support tool for economic development, (2) that this understanding of research amplifies a specific way and quality of community building in focussing on market-relevant and exploitable research branches and (3) that the procedural guidelines for research communities delimit content, constellations and application of research outcomes. The result of the investigation supports the conjecture of a massive bias of European research policy towards economically exploitable resesarch, mainly from engeneering and natural sciences. It also proofs that community building in European research policy after WWII is mainly a top-down proactive process staged by the European Commission.