Departmental research: Research for public services with special consideration in the area of State´s and European Union´s health responsibilities.

• Applicant: Privatdozentin Dr. A. Katarina Weilert
• Subject Area: Public Law
• Term: from 2017 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 338276349

The research project aims to analyse departmental research within the Federal Republic of Germany, the European Union and within their cooperative administrations. Thereby special reference is made to the area of State´s and the European Union´s health responsibilities. The project shall identify, from a legal perspective, the legitimate and necessary extent of departmental research. At the same time, it adds to the discussion of the relationship of scientific knowledge to modern statehood, both from a national perspective and within a supranational context. Within the national context, departmental research is carried out by institutions of the federal ministry or the state ministries of the Länder (or otherwise commissioned) for the fulfillment of State duties. The German concept of departmental research will be legally defined by taking into consideration its historical roots, and will be further developed within the scope of the European Union. Departmental research, or in the transnational context: executive research, is to be seen as a tension between free research and ministerial duties. Therefore, departmental research holds a constitutionally ambiguous position with two different and sometimes conflicting systems, and thus raises previously unrecognized problems that will be systematically examined and answered in this project. The project starts from the thesis that the freedom of science as guaranteed by Art. 5 III of the German Constitution is not applicable to departmental research in its use as a subjective right of the freedom of science, but rather an objective principle. As such, it is supposed that free research is vital for a democratic constitutional state. This leads to the insight that institutionalized research by the State needs to be based on a specific legal framework of conditions. In the area of the State´s responsibility for health, it shall be examined as to how and within what limits the State should carry out its tasks on the basis of own research institutions. Which institutional arrangements are necessary in order to prevent departmental research from being misused to legitimize political power? To this end, the federal departmental research institutions will be analysed with respect to their tasks and organization, and to the question of whether they are in accordance with constitutional requirements. At the level of the European Union, the executive research will also be analysed within the area of health responsibility. It will be shown how knowledge for executive tasks is generated within the multilevel system of the European Union. Further, there will be an analysis of which legal requirements apply and whether they are being complied with. These findings shall also contribute to the further understanding of European administrative law and the cooperative administration of States and the European Union.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants