European Parliamentary Research Service

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The European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS) is the in-house research department and think tank of the European Parliament, providing research and analytical support to the members of the European Parliament, its parliamentary committees and the Parliament as a whole.^[1] It was created in November 2013 as a directorate-general within the Parliament's permanent administration. The EPRS philosophy is to provide independent, objective and authoritative analysis of, and research on, policy issues relating to the European Union, in order to assist Members in their parliamentary work.^[2]

EPRS products and services include research for members, ‘EU Legislation in progress’ briefings, and tailored training courses.^[3] EPRS also supports and promotes parliamentary outreach to the wider public.

The creation of the EPRS may be explained by the desire in the early 2010s to ensure the "[…] more rational organization" of the European Parliament's permanent administration, notably of DG Presidency, which dealt at the time "with a number of not necessarily related matters (security services, library and lawyer linguists); in this context the Library could be separated from DG Presidency and developed into a new Directorate-General for Parliamentary Research Services, with about 200 staff, by bringing together, in a budgetary neutral way" existing services with an analytical focus.^[4][5]