Chapter 5 examines the case of EU nanotechnology policy, showing that the mobilisation of ethics experts acted as atool to check the rise of a potential political conflict on ‘nanos’. By showcasing that a new type of experts representing a diversity of voices had been consulted, EU policymakers ensured that policy remained formulated within a closed community ofactors. They also successfully framed other environmental and health safety concerns as technical, rather than ethical, issues, thus allowing for a compartmentalisation of ethics and a technicalisation of the debate. The mobilisation of ethics experts helped check the rise of conflict because expert knowledge was produced in an iterative process between experts and policymakers. Policymakers gave substantial information to the EGE experts, and informed them about the tenets of the policy debate as well as its policy preferences. But orchestration was facilitated by an embedding of experts into ongoing policy debates and narratives. EU policymakers and ethics experts worked together in various crossing points, such as conferences, workshops and roundtables, where a common way of looking at the issue was developed.

Chapter 6 examines the case of the EU controversy on data protection. In the context of the launch of the Digital Agenda and the introduction of sensitive security and defence areas in EU-funded research, EU policymakers asked ethics experts to issue two opinions on the ethics of information and communication technologies. But as the EGE experts started their work, the Commission also launched the data protection legislative reform; in this context data privacy became the object of a controversy, affecting the role ethics experts played in policy. First, the EGE became a terrain of competition between the various Commission DGs involved in data protection issues. Second, and as the policy debate became increasingly polarised, the EGE’s work was also increasingly perceived as a tool to unlock policy deadlock. The EGE experts calibrated their findings in order to deconstruct the binary positions that had been evoked in the debate and elaborate a more consensual policy narrative. The case brings to light that when policy conflicts intensify, the role of ethics experts shifts from conflict containment to conflict manoeuvring.

Chapter 4 examines the case of the EU controversy on the funding of embryo research,arguing that the mobilisation of ethics experts allowed policymakers to successfully bypass the conflict which had surfaced in the field. The mobilisation of the EGE facilitated the technicalisation of discussions on embryo research, by shifting the debate away from ‘either-or’ positions and presenting a range of intermediary scenarios. The EGE acted as a locus for the elaboration of a workable policy solution, in a context in which no agreement could be reached in the political arena. The position of ethics experts could then be invoked by policymakers in order to back their own position. The European Commission was able to mobilise expert bioethicists to such avail because policymakers and experts worked together in various crossing points and developed a similar approach to the issue. Experts also calibrated the knowledge they produced, in order to make policy possible. When the debate reopened ahead of the adoption of FP7, EU policymakers carefully orchestrated theknowledge production process by strictly delineatingthe question experts were asked.