This chapter explores the function of expert knowledge in what can be described as a political organization par excellence: the European Commission, and more especially its department dealing with immigration policy. This department, the Directorate-General Justice, Liberty and Security, is to a large degree screened from the societal impacts of its actions. Its commissioner (the equivalent of a national minister) has no direct electoral accountability, and limited involvement in policy implementation. This means that it derives its legitimacy from its formal structures, rhetoric and decisions far more than from its output. It is also an organization that sees its strength and persistence as contingent on the continued pace of European integration. Thus its organizational ideology is strongly geared towards expanding its scope of competence, typically by means of putting forward proposals for new areas of European Union (EU) co-operation. Of the three organizations examined in this book, it is the one most likely to use knowledge as a source of legitimation or to substantiate policy preferences.

The specific case I shall explore is the establishment and evolution of the European Migration Network, a consortium of research bodies from fifteen EU member states, established by the Directorate-General in 2002 to provide data and research on immigration and asylum issues. The Directorate's stated rationale for setting up the network was as a resource for improving the quality of national European and EU policy.