"This project provides a detailed analysis of how European law structures the use of different types of expertise in European policy-making, and assesses whether and to what extent objectives such as ensuring scientific expertise, sound evidence and interest representation overlap or are in tension with each other. However, European law constitutes a particular social subsystem, a cognitive framework and a form of expertise. While law is expected to deliver the regulatory framework through which different types of expertise are incorporated into European policy-making, it is itself framed through a process in which different types of expertise play a role. This research project has therefore two objectives.Objective 1: Mapping and critically assessing the European legal framework that structures different types of expertise in European policy-making.Objective 2: Analysing how European law functions as a social subsystem and assessing how legal expertise functions in relation to other forms of expertise in European policy-making.While the project is inspired by legal theory, and in particular systems theory and reflexive law theory, it employs an interdisciplinary methodology ensuring a detailed empirical enquiry based on legal analysis, semi-structured elite interviews, process tracing of adopted policy measures, and network analysis. The project focuses on three policy areas that feature very different modes of European governance, namely nano-technology, employment, and competition policy."