Interview with Dr. Aude Lapprand, the director of the Sciences Citoyennes NGO. She previously worked for 10 years as a research engineer for private companies, after completing a thesis in polymer physical chemistry. Within the NGO, Dr. Aude Lapprand is responsible for developing the structure and coordinating the teams of volunteers and employees. She initiated and leads the Horizon TERRE (Tous Ensemble pour une Recherche Responsable et Engagés – All Together for Responsible and Committed Research) campaign, supports participatory research initiatives, and co-leads a movement (MSER) aimed at bringing together French organizations involved in the creation of new forms of knowledge.
1. What three things should change in the next Framework Programme?
If I had to change three elements of the next European Framework Programme for research (FP10), I would begin with its ideological orientation. For years, EU Framework Programmes have been structured around the same underlying horizon: competitiveness and economic growth. This orientation is never debated, never reconsidered, yet it shapes everything — the topics that can be explored, and those that cannot. FP10 does not break with this logic; on the contrary, it reinforces it by explicitly linking the programme to the future European Competitiveness Fund. This reinforces a narrow vision of research in which social and environmental crises are expected to be resolved mainly through technological means, especially those derived from the digital sector. These technologies are already overrepresented in calls for proposals and in expert groups.
This ideological framing creates a self-perpetuating circle: funding produces research aligned with the same economic model, which in turn serves to justify the continuation of the same model in the next programme. Alternative approaches — systemic, critical, or exploring different institutional pathways — remain marginal, even though the multiple crises we face clearly demand new ways of thinking.
The second change concerns the distribution of funding. Public and private research receive the overwhelming majority of FP support, which is not inherently problematic. What is problematic is the near absence of support for non-profit civil society, which also produces valuable knowledge. Studies on FP7 and FP8 show that only about 6% of the budget went to civil society organisations, and barely 3% if we exclude NGOs linked to private economic interests. This is a major democratic and epistemic blind spot. In France, for example, the three biggest beneficiaries of European research funds are Thales, Airbus and Safran — a telling indicator of the type of societal model implicitly promoted. Entire fields of knowledge rooted in communities, environmental justice, and social struggles remain overlooked.
Finally, the programme’s governance urgently needs a democratic overhaul. The design of FP10 remains largely opaque. Texts are drafted within the Commission services, in an environment where Brussels-based lobbies play a significant role. Public consultations are limited, reaching only those already familiar with EU procedures, and there is no guarantee at all that citizen contributions will be taken into account. Expert groups, which are supposed to inform policymaking, are often unbalanced. The High Level Group involved in preparing FP10 included several members who straddle the worlds of research and entrepreneurship, and an overrepresentation of digital-sector experts. It is therefore unsurprising that their recommendations reflect technocentric thinking. Moreover, the process suffers from a chronic lack of transparency: no meeting minutes, no clear access to the people consulted, and no publicly available agendas. Yet these non-elected groups wield considerable influence, as illustrated previously by the impact of the Lamy report on Horizon Europe.
2. Does FP10 meet citizens’ expectations?
At this stage, it is very difficult to claim that FP10 meets citizens’ expectations. For one simple reason: most citizens do not even know that such a programme exists, despite the fact that it is one of the European Union’s largest budgetary instruments. This lack of awareness is not due to disinterest, but to a genuine lack of transparency in how scientific and technological priorities are defined.
Previous attempts to bring research closer to citizens have not been particularly successful. The example of the “missions” under Horizon Europe illustrates this. Behind the appearance of technical neutrality, these missions in fact reflect deeply political choices. Deciding to increase cancer survival rates rather than investing more heavily in environmental and public health prevention is not a purely scientific or technical decision: it is a political choice. Yet such decisions were made by experts without any citizen involvement. This disconnect creates a widening gap between the research that is funded and the priorities that citizens might express if they were genuinely included in the conversation.
The early directions suggested for FP10 do little to bridge this gap. The new technological ambitions being proposed — a future CERN collider, “clean” intelligent aviation, quantum computing, expensive human regeneration therapies — seem far removed from the social and environmental concerns expressed by both citizens and many researchers. They perpetuate a costly, resource-intensive technological imaginary that is frequently contested and rarely debated publicly.
Without a genuine public deliberation process, it is difficult to argue that FP10 meets citizens’ expectations. In reality, it appears to cater primarily to a narrow circle of institutional, industrial and technological actors operating within an ideological framework that has never been collectively debated. As long as this situation persists, the gap between European research policy and the public will only widen.
3. Can the process for defining FP10 priorities be made more democratic?
Yes — and not only can it be made more democratic, it absolutely should be. But achieving this requires breaking with the Commission’s traditional approach, which relies heavily on online consultations and targeted hearings involving actors who are already engaged in EU processes. While these tools have their uses, they are not sufficient to ensure broad and meaningful participation. They exclude the vast majority of citizens and prevent the emergence of a shared vision for European research.
A credible alternative exists: creating a genuine European Citizens’ Assembly dedicated to the Framework Programme. Such an assembly, based on random selection, would ensure a socially diverse representation of the population. With appropriate pluralistic and contradictory training, citizens would be able to understand the scientific, industrial, environmental and political stakes of FP10. They could then formulate informed, legitimate and representative recommendations. For this process to be meaningful, these recommendations should have binding force over part of the budget — for example, 10% — and should require a formal, reasoned response from the European Parliament or the Commission.
This approach must also go hand in hand with a strong commitment to transparency. Decisions should be documented, trade-offs explained, and citizen contributions made visible throughout the process. This would help rebuild trust in a public policy that is currently perceived as distant and technocratic.
Democratising FP10 also requires rethinking the role of non-profit civil society in research projects. Just as the EU has taken steps to facilitate SME participation, it should take equivalent measures for associations, grassroots organisations, NGOs and citizen groups — not as mere communication channels but as genuine co-producers of knowledge. Their insights, lived experiences, and contextual expertiseare essential to meaningful scientific inquiry.
A truly democratic FP10 would therefore no longer be an exercise conducted by experts behind closed doors, but a collective European construction — a way to make research a shared public good rather than a technocratic instrument.
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