Joint Research Centre (JRC) is the European Commission’s science and knowledge service, offering independent, evidence‑based research to support EU policymaking. It employs scientists across varied disciplines to anticipate future needs, integrate scientific and policy perspectives, and assess policy impact.
JRC operates as a Directorate‑General of the Commission, led by a Director‑General and advised by a Board of Governors. Its organisational structure spans six institutes in five EU countries—Belgium (Brussels, Geel), Germany (Karlsruhe), Italy (Ispra), the Netherlands (Petten), and Spain (Seville)—covering areas such as energy and transport, health and consumer protection, and reference measurements.
JRC supports sustainable finance and broader financial policy through research on environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors, financial stability, fintech and digital finance. It provides scientific evidence for sustainable finance frameworks and has studied green bonds, demonstrating their resilience and cost‑effectiveness, including during the COVID‑19 pandemic. It also facilitates knowledge‑exchange via its Sustainable Finance Research Forum and an annual Sustainable Finance Summer School for researchers, policymakers and practitioners.
JRC offers an extensive range of publicly accessible tools, datasets and models. These include the JRC Data Catalogue—hosting collections such as the JRC‑IDEES energy‑economy‑emissions database and detailed climate‑impact datasets—and scientific software and modelling tools supporting environmental, agricultural, linguistic and other policy domains.
Additionally, JRC maintains linguistic resources for text mining, such as the multilingual parallel corpus JRC‑Acquis, underpinning cross‑language analysis and computational linguistics.
Overall, JRC delivers independent scientific expertise, practical data tools, policy-relevant insights and stakeholder-engagement platforms. Its work spans energy, environment, digital transformation, health, and sustainable finance—making it a critical source for policymakers and researchers.
We do science for policy
When policymakers create laws that affect millions of Europeans, how can they be confident that these laws will help people live better and safely? What source of information can they rely on? Who can they trust?
Scientists of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) carry out research in various fields to provide independent advice to EU policymakers and put science at the heart of European policies.
We are working every day to make European policies grounded in science.
