Expert Groups in Directorate-General for Agriculture: Variation in the Uses of Expertise and Socialization for EU Policy-Making Norms

The diversity of levels of expertise in the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development suggests that a normative conception of experts and expertise should be avoided. Based on in-depth fieldwork in the agricultural sectors of tobacco and sugar beet, the paper analyzes the operation of two specific groups, namely experts committees, and advisory groups, in the work of this Directorate-General. Although these groups are composed indistinctly of experts, their profile and missions are very different. By comparing the running of these advisory groups, the paper shows how these groups function as real socialization units as experts internalize cognitive systems and appropriate behaviors, which correspond to how public action must be conducted at the European level. While for sugar beet experts, the technical range is fully internalized, the tobacco experts are stigmatized and refuse to adopt “good” norms of behavior despite the fact that the technical and scientific aspects of the debates make it a rule and disqualify others types of discourse. In other words, the European Commission develops its capacities for the production and prescription of norms and standards of public action through the work of experts groups.