TiGRE for better Trust in Governance and Regulation in Europe

The demands of citizens and public authorities for data and privacy protection, financial stability, product safety and traceability are constantly increasing. In such a context, all actors need to trust governance and regulatory regimes that their interests are safeguarded. However, recent scandals, such as major data leakages and privacy-threatening behaviour by Facebook, Google or Zoom for instance, have created threats for citizens’ trust in regulatory regimes.

In TiGRE, we believe that an optimal level of trust is a precondition and a consequence of well-functioning of regulatory regimes, which operate across different levels of governance for carrying out regulatory policies. In this context, we will investigate under which conditions regulatory regimes are trusted by analysing the interactions between the involved actors. We aim to draw a more encompassing picture of trust dynamics and understand their drivers as well as their political and socio-economic effects.

TiGRE is a multidisciplinary research project which benefits from the expertise of nine top-level universities and research centres and one SME, from nine different countries, bringing together a broad range of theoretical and methodological skills. TiGRE receives funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. The project started on 1 January 2020 and will run until 30 June 2023.
“While trust may expand the time horizon of a system, loss of trust may make it contract, thus diminishing the system’s complexity and its potential for giving satisfaction.”
– Niklas Luhmann
“Political trust is best thought of as a differentiated attitude toward different levels of the political system.”
– William A. Gamson
“Trust does not reside in integrated circuits of fiber optic cables. Although it involves an exchange of information, trust is not reducible to information.”
– Francis Fukuyama
“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche
“Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”
– Corrie ten Boom
“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”
– Ernest Hemingway
This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 870722 (TiGRE).