The Fifth Freedom Helps to Advance Science

To support this thesis, two important insights from recent science studies are helpful. First, much scientific knowledge necessarily requires know-how, or implicit knowledge of procedures and methods that only experienced researchers possess (cf. Polanyi Reference Polanyi1958). This tacit knowledge cannot be expressed completely by abstract rules that can be taught and transferred mechanically; it must be shown to colleagues and passed on to the next generation through personal exchanges, shared experiences, and processes of joint reasoning. In addition, know-how is frequently tied to the material conditions of research. Consider a new type of instrument that appears on the scene, such as the advanced confocal laser microscope that may soon replace traditional methods in dermapathology owing to its improved speed and accuracy in the diagnosis and treatment of skin cancer (Gareau et al. Reference Gareau, Krueger, Hawkes, Lish, Dietz, Guembe Mülberger, Mu, Stevenson, Lewin, Meehan and Carucci2017). The scientists who developed the microscope cannot train researchers at other locations without taking the device there and presenting it to them. Open access to data, technologies, and so on must flow freely together with researchers moving from one place to another to transmit their know-how and implicit knowledge. Second, knowledge production is often a highly distributed, collaborative activity (see, for example, Galison and Hevly 1992; Kitcher Reference Kitcher1990, Reference Kitcher1993). In particle accelerators, the human genome project, climate science, large-scale surveys concerning health developments in society, or also major editorial projects in the humanities, many people must be brought together as easily as possible in order to overcome blind spots, remove cognitive limitations, learn more efficiently, and improve methods, procedures, and research instruments, such as the confocal laser microscope mentioned (for more, see Knorr Cetina Reference Knorr Cetina1995, Reference Knorr Cetina1999; Merz and Sorgner Reference Merz and Sorgner2022).

Both features of scientific research point toward the same conclusion. Scientists must come together: the closer, the better; the more often, the better; the more freely, the better. However, the fact that science projects have developed into ever larger and more costly collaborative endeavours has led to problems. There are increasingly huge bureaucratic costs – and not only because of the need for researchers to come together across national borders. Even before this need arises, there are growing demands in terms of writing research proposals with precise financial and administrative planning using spreadsheets, and duties of regular reporting and justifying of one’s outputs often in quantified forms.Footnote ^f It may be exaggerated to speak of increasing ‘meaninglessness in bureaucratized science’ (Finkielzstein and Wagner Reference Finkielzstein and Wagner2023), but it is generally true that research is hampered by unnecessary, unjustified, and even discriminating bureaucracy (Halfman and Radder Reference Halfman and Radder2015). In addition, there are national regulations and practices inside the EU that make scientific learning and collaboration across national borders difficult, if not impossible (see supplementary material). This entails a loss of freedom to do the work one really ought to do as a scientist: investigating nature and human society.

Could things be better? Consider an analogy. Nowadays, the positive economic effects of abolishing national tariffs and other barriers through the four freedoms of the Single Market are widely recognized. Estimates vary, but it is clear that EU countries have grown much faster due to their participation in the Single Market (e.g. Bublitz Reference Bublitz2017; in’t Velt 2019). It is highly plausible that reducing and removing bureaucratic and technocratic barriers in academia would increase scientific learning and productivity as well. Scientists would be burdened with fewer bureaucratic tasks and lower costs when they move to take up a new scholarship or position in another EU country. Experience and expertise would be brought together more easily, ideally with the smallest transactional costs possible. Therefore, if researchers, knowledge, methods, and the material means and technologies necessary for scientific research flow more freely, science can and probably will progress faster and better.

The Fifth Freedom Supports the Traditional Freedom of Research

The fifth freedom is not the same as the traditional freedom of research. However, both can be closely connected in ways that deserve to be highlighted.Footnote ^g Freedom of research, which in Europe (and beyond) often enjoys the status of a constitutional right, means that science should remain free from undue political and economic influences – such as when political forces, industrial companies, or other special interest groups try to bend the processes and results of scientific research, and communication thereof to the public, in their favour.Footnote ^h Only well-justified ethical principles ought to constrain research. Scientists, while having to be responsible citizens just like everybody else, should be able to reason about their work publicly, without having to fear unacceptable pressures e.g. in favour of or against producing or publishing their results. The fifth freedom can provide important support here. As a well-worn German proverb says, Reisen bildet; and, we may add, Reisen stärkt. Free mobility of research, researchers, and the means of research boosts the plurality of researchers’ perspectives, the quality of their evidence and arguments, and thereby also their ability to protect themselves from undue pressures. Thus, a fully realized fifth freedom can boost the traditional freedom of research in a novel way.

The Fifth Freedom Helps to Advance Societies and European Integration

Science and ordinary life no longer constitute separate domains as they did in premodern societies: we live in a scientific Lebenswelt (Krüger Reference Krüger, Sturm, Carl and Daston2005). Scientific knowledge plays a crucial role in societal innovations of almost any kind today. As was already pointed out in the 1995 White Book of the EU Commission under the presidency of Jacques Delors, we have in recent decades moved more and more towards a ‘knowledge society’ (cf. also Bell Reference Bell1973). By advancing science through the fifth freedom, we advance the power of science to spearhead innovation in technology, the economy, and human well-being. This is also the main thrust of Letta’s recent report. It sees the fifth freedom as primarily justified by its potential to embed ‘research and innovation drivers at the core of the Single Market, thereby fostering an ecosystem where knowledge diffusion propels both economic vitality, societal advancement and cultural enlightenment’ (Letta Reference Letta2024: 7). Thus, not only would science as a system of its own right benefit, but societies in general would profit from the fifth freedom too.

This general claim can also be tied to a different, more specific consideration. Potočnik noted in 2007 that the existence of national funding and the restrictions inherent to it often lead to the doubling of research, with the result that financial resources are wasted. Money could be saved if research efforts became more coordinated – once again, by enhancing the free and equal mobility of researchers and their methods, means, and results across national boundaries. The more resources huge scientific projects involving many researchers require, the more it makes sense for money and technologies to be pooled among different nations. The fifth freedom can thus intensify the European unification project. In this vein, Potočnik wrote: ‘We need a greater understanding that national interest coincides with European interest. We need to embrace an attitude which sees Europe come first’ (Potočnik Reference Potočnik2007: 3). One might view this as too optimistic or too unrealistic. I will later discuss how to address nationalist objections against adding a fifth EU freedom to the four existing ones.

The Fifth Freedom Supports Essential Ideals of the Enlightenment

Not only does realizing the fifth freedom to the highest degree possible strengthen free access to information and the freedom of research, but enabling researchers and the means necessary for their research to move more freely will foster better, less parochial, and less biased theories of nature and humankind. This is precisely what open, democratic societies that pursue the best ideals of the Enlightenment need: to decide on important political projects, the best science is needed to make free speech and rational deliberation possible that is worthy of those names (cf. Kitcher Reference Kitcher2011). Despite its familiar limitations, science – in collaboration with philosophy – has historically been and still is the best example for training and applying the capacities of critical thinking or reasoning (cf. for example Siegel Reference Siegel1985). These capacities are needed to protect our societies against today’s ubiquitous propaganda, populism, and polarization (Moshman Reference Moshman2020; Suárez and Sturm Reference Suárez and Sturm2021).

We currently face increasing global tensions and conflicts between democracies and authoritarian regimes. Significant decoupling of research collaborations between, for instance, Russia and the West has taken place in reaction to the Ukraine war. Therefore, open access to scientific knowledge and freedom of movement may in certain areas have to be restricted to those partners who can be trusted. The EU, with its history of peaceful collaboration and strengthening of democratic values across national borders, provides a more than adequate framework for such trust. Thus, for the time being, the fifth freedom is one that can and should be strengthened within the EU – and with selected, trusted partners in the democratic world. If carried out carefully and prudently, this will support the ideals of democracy in new ways.

In sum, the fifth freedom can and probably will promote a flourishing of science itself, freedom of research, economic and technological innovations within society, and democratic ideals of the Enlightenment. Moreover, it can strongly advance European integration. Since this is so, freedom of knowledge should be treated as equally important as the other four basic freedoms of the EU’s Single Market.

Two Arguments for the Fifth Freedom Having the Status of a Right

(1) To begin, the four basic freedoms of the Single Market come with (i) the force of immediate legal validity, i.e. EU citizens can claim them as rights which trump national law, and (ii) the duty of non-discrimination: the free flow of persons, goods, services, and capital prohibits nationality being used as a discriminating criterion (see, for example, Cuyvers Reference Cuyvers and Ugirashebuja2017). If one aims, as the EU Commission does, to create a fifth freedom deserving of this name, it must come with this same legal validity, i.e. as a right, and imply a duty of non-discrimination. To be fair, this goal must be realized through joint action of EU member states: as the Treaty of the European Union declares in Article 5 (2), ‘the Union shall act only within the limits of the competences conferred upon it by the Member States in the Treaties’. However, as already indicated, the EU Council has long committed itself to the fifth freedom goal (EU Council 2008). So, in principle at least, EU member states are on board; but they need to act.

(2) The fifth freedom can be seen as derivable from two already existing rights: the free mobility of people inside of the EU and the freedom of research. Researchers are people, and so they can of course move freely within the EU. That is the beauty of logic. Accordingly, since 2008, courts in the EU have begun to treat as illegal any discriminations of researchers who are EU citizens and try to access or establish themselves in the academic institutions of EU countries other than their home country (Cippitani Reference Cippitani2015: 142; Cippitani and Colcelli Reference Cippitani and Colcelli2021: 160). In addition, as argued above, to be a stable material reality, the freedom of research profits from the free mobility of researchers, their expertise, and results, and – at least to a very considerable degree – the technological and financial means necessary for knowledge production. Thus, the two pre-existing rights again support the claim that the fifth freedom is, and should be treated as, a right of European researchers.

While argument (1) justifies the fifth freedom as a right by viewing it in parallel to the general legal status and force of the four accepted freedoms, argument (2) focuses on the better functioning of the scientific system, itself viewed as already derived from other existing freedoms. Different actors will be persuaded by different arguments; but in any case, the fifth freedom is a reasonable and timely extension of the four freedoms.

Qualifications

Even if one accepts these arguments, one might think that they do not sufficiently clarify and justify the status of the fifth freedom as a right in all its manifold aspects. What qualifications will have to be made? Who should enjoy such a right, in what aspects, and with what legal guarantees? I do not claim to have all the answers yet, but here come three points which I hope will trigger a broader academic and political discussion.

First, the fifth freedom is intended to be realized within the EU, as a constitutive part of Dahrendorf’s and his successors’ plans for the ERA. But such a territorial restriction raises problems. For instance, one of the most important political steps taken in recent decades towards creating the ERA is the Bologna process. This created a system of comparable university degrees, especially at the Bachelor and Master’s levels, with the aim of enabling students to move more freely.Footnote ⁱ Now, the countries that have signed the Bologna Declaration make up the so-called European Higher Education Area (EHEA), many members of which are outside the EU, such as the UK, Turkey, Russia, and some Asian countries. A first response here might be to view the fifth freedom solely as a right of EU citizens; but there is a complication with this move. The four freedoms apply to the European Economic Area (EEA), which next to all EU countries includes three EFTA countries (Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway). Given that the fifth freedom is modelled on the four freedoms and is partly based on them, it seems fitting to view the EEA as the proper realm for the fifth freedom too. However, it is not necessary for non-EU countries in the EEA to adopt the fifth freedom; that can be left to political negotiations. If they wish to do so, the area of free mobility of researchers, research methods, funding, technologies, and results would be larger and more effective. So as not to overcomplicate matters, I will not mention the EEA again and I will simplify things by speaking only of the EU, its citizens, researchers, and so on. Readers can adapt statements concerning non-EU countries in the EEA as necessary in their own minds.

Second, the Bologna process does not possess the legal force of EU legislation. We need a public discussion about whether students from EU and non-EU countries in the EHEA can enjoy the same rights, with the same legal force. Once again, it seems pragmatically reasonable here that, for the time being, only EU citizens should enjoy free mobility as a legally enforceable right.Footnote ^j Students from other countries will still have access under the Bologna system but will continue to face more bureaucracy than EU citizens. If other countries want to join, this again must be a matter of political negotiation with them.

Third, it is easier to improve conditions for the free mobility of researchers than for the free mobility of national research funding. For the former, we will typically only (‘Only!’, as sceptics might say with irony) have to reduce or remove unacceptable, discriminatory national regulations and practices impeding entry into EU academic institutions. For the latter, we will have to discuss the extent to which national funding should become movable across internal EU borders – a more complex and controversial issue.

Such a differentiation between aspects of the fifth freedom should not be surprising. It is often the case that rights can be associated with different degrees of legal force. For instance, in international law, the principle of territorial sovereignty is a so-called ius cogens, that is, a law from which no derogation is permitted. There are other principles of international law that do not possess the same status, or where this is controversial. Thus, while there is a right of peoples to self-determination, this is not an unlimited right of peoples within plurinational countries to form their own state. In contested cases, the principle of territorial sovereignty can trump that right to self-determination, at least as long as all citizens are equally granted typical participatory rights (which was not the case in the colonies of imperial powers). Still, international law recommends that states should grant cultural or linguistic autonomy to, for example, ethnic minorities, or perhaps install regional parliaments possessing certain powers. Thus, the principle of the self-determination of peoples is a right, and one with a certain efficacy, but a weaker one than that of territorial sovereignty.

Similarly, we can conceive of the fifth freedom as a right, but one allowing for differentiations. ‘Freedom of knowledge’ is a complex notion, referring to different objects and allowing for different degrees of realization. One basic differentiation could be between, on the one hand, the requirement to abolish discriminatory national rules and practices concerning the mobility of researchers and research results and, on the other hand, the requirement to abolish national rules and practices that limit the mobility of funding and other material conditions of research. It should be a constitutive, enforceable right of EU academics that there be no unnecessary, outdated, or discriminating regulations and practices of the former kind. The free movement of research funding, technologies, and other material conditions of research can be seen as a right, too, but as a ‘regulative’ norm which needs to be realized progressively. Political actors should nonetheless realize this latter free movement as fast and as far as possible, through specific substantial decisions.Footnote ^k The EU Commission has pushed for more than we currently have in this regard, and Enrico Letta’s (Reference Letta2024) report also argues for the urgency of freeing science from excessive national and bureaucratic restrictions within Europe. Two considerations help to show why demanding more free movement of research funding, technologies, and other material conditions of research is justified: countering nationalist objections, and emphasizing facts and possibilities that show how the ‘money follows researcher’ principle can and should be expanded beyond current practice. In what follows, I will address these points. I will also argue that the fifth freedom cannot, for the time being, be expanded to the global level.

Demanding Too Much or Too Little? Nationalist and Globalist Objections

Two opposite groups of objections against the considerations presented so far arise from taking either a nationalist or a globalist standpoint. While the former considers the idea of the fifth freedom to be too idealistic, the latter considers it not to be idealistic enough.

Nationalist objections can be directed against any aspect of the fifth freedom. However, I will assume that at least moderate defenders of national interests will accept as a constitutive, enforceable right of EU researchers that there be no unnecessary, outdated, or discriminatory regulations and practices that hamper their free mobility inside the EU. Instead, I will focus on the issue of the free flow of national research funding across EU internal borders. Should national or regional funding agencies really open their financial resources up to the fifth freedom concept? To begin, the arguments presented in the second section are important, although the nationalist concerned with science funding will probably dismiss them anyhow. But if EU countries and their funding agencies accept the arguments, at least in theory – if they accept, that is, that the fifth freedom supports scientific progress, freedom of research, EU economies, and democratic practices and virtues, and that it constitutes a new step in the EU integration process – then these actors should also accept in practice that this implies promoting free mobility of research funding as much as possible. In other words, if one accepts the arguments given in the second section, then the burden of proof shifts. It should no longer be the application of the fifth freedom to national research grants that requires special justification; it should be national protectionism that must now defend itself. Just claiming that this protection is the status quo is no longer acceptable.

Still, the world being as it is, it does not come as a surprise that national funding organizations still mostly refuse to allow funds to move abroad with researchers, without feeling the need to justify themselves. So, what we need at this point are facts and arguments not for a demand for EU-wide mobility of national research funding as such, but for it being realistic and, perhaps, advantageous to all.

First, let me reiterate an important fact. I wrote that it is ‘mostly’, but not universally, true that national funding is restricted in its portability. Some national funding organizations have already taken a progressive step which helps especially – though not exclusively – early career researchers, by adopting the ‘money follows researcher’ principle. If a researcher has obtained a national grant, and subsequently obtains an academic position in another country, then the grant can be carried with the researcher to the new position. So far, six national funding organizations follow this policy: the DFG (Germany), the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), the Austrian Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung (FWF), the Independent Research Fund Denmark (DFF, Denmark), the Dutch Research Council (NWO, Netherlands), and the UK Research and Innovation body (UKRI).Footnote ^l Moving national research funding abroad is no longer an absolute taboo. This also proves that some organizations have contributed to the realization of this aspect of the fifth freedom. Clearly, if more funding organizations were to follow this example, this would significantly promote that freedom. And, once again, the burden of proof should be firmly on the side of those who favour national protection of research funding.