50th Plenary Meeting of the Group of Chief Scientific Advisors

15 September 2026

The Group of Chief Scientific Advisors met for the fiftieth time on 15 September.

Seven scientists, appointed in a personal capacity and chaired by Adam Izdebski and co-chair Mangala Srinivas, meet regularly to work through the advice in preparation, requests from Commissioners, and topics that may come next.

When a Commissioner asks a question, a SAPEA working group assembles the evidence. The Advisors then decide what follows. They are rarely specialists in that topic, and that distance is the point: their task is to judge what a body of evidence can support and put it in terms a policymaker can act on. They can do that from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Two topics are in preparation. The first is science and democracy, on how science can strengthen democratic resilience across the EU. The second is ultra-processed food: what does science say about ultra-processed foods and health, and which policies could support healthier diets?

The Group of Chief Scientific Advisors met for the fiftieth time on 15 September. Seven scientists, appointed in a personal capacity and chaired by Adam Izdebski and co-chair Mangala Srinivas, meet regularly to work through the advice in preparation, requests from Commissioners, and topics that may come next. When a Commissioner asks a question, a SAPEA working group assembles the evidence. The Advisors then decide what follows. They are rarely specialists in that topic, and that distance is the point: their task is to judge what a body of evidence can support and put it in terms a policymaker can act on. They can do that from an interdisciplinary perspective.

This work by Scientific Advice Mechanism is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)