The Genome of Europe consortium places great importance on ethical, legal, and societal considerations. Therefore, its internal quality assurance, monitoring, and evaluation measures are enhanced by external expert advice and consultations through specialized advisory boards.

Scientific Advisory Board (SAB)

SAB comprises of internationally renowned experts on genomics and public health, who will provide independent advice on GoE activities. The SAB provides advice, feedback and recommendations on the project implementation and progress through annual reports and supports the consortium in the mitigation of hurdles.

Minority Advisory Board (MAB)

Genome of Europe has a goal to collect WGS data from 40 most common ancestries of citizens living in Europe + underrepresented minority groups. Europe’s rich genetic diversity, shaped by migrations and regional histories, necessitates the inclusion of minorities for an accurate representation of genetic complexities. Therefore an external advisory board will be set up on the involvement of minorities in order to engage with minority groups and to organize discussions to communicate, explain and also to receive feedback on the needs and concerns of minority groups.

MAB comprises of external experts who will advise GoE consortium on matters involving minority groups, e.g., population subgroups from non-EU countries and those not represented as a country within EU (e.g., Roma, Sinti and Sami).

Ethics Advisory board (EAB)

Genome of Europe will establish an independent Ethics Advisory board that will ensure that ethics issues are monitored in a timely and independent manner. The EAB will cover the expertise of ethics of research with biological samples, biobanking, data protection and ELSI of genomics research.

The EAB will produce Ethics Reports which will provide a holistic overview of how ethical concerns have been addressed for both legacy databases and new data collection, beyond only compliance with data protection regulations and citizen engagement activities