Anchoring European Governance: Two Versions of Responsible Research and Innovation and EU Fundamental Rights as ‘Normative Anchor Points’

Among the various experiments in ‘new governance’, the model of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is emerging in the European landscape as quite promising. Up to now there have been two versions of RRI: a socio-empirical version which tends to underline the role of democratic processes aimed at identifying values on which governance needs to be anchored; and a normative version which stresses the role of EU goals (among which fundamental rights) as ‘normative anchor points’ of both governance strategies and policy-making. Both versions are unsatisfactory. The first since it suggests movable anchorage which could clash with prefixed values, such as individual rights. The second since it does not safeguard fundamental rights in the process of balancing ‘anchor points’. This result is counterintuitive because it exposes governance to the risk of facing adverse court decisions in the defense of individual rights, thus losing its anticipative attitude. In order to avoid this outcome the paper argues that it is only through better integration between the system of human rights and that of EU fundamental rights that the anticipative feature of RRI can be preserved.