| FRANCIA. TAGLIO DI 80 MLN DI EURO NEL BUDGET 2014 DELL’ANR (AGENCE NATIONALE DE LA RECHERCHE) |
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Geneviève Fioraso, France's minister of higher education and research, has dismissed warnings that the country's budget cuts threaten basic research. The French Academy of Sciences has issued its strongest distress signal in decades to warn against the consequences of recent declines in government research spending. The statement, released last month, is labelled as a ‘cry of alarm’ — and its message is expressed “in the toughest language the academy has ever used since I began my research career 45 years ago”, academy vice-president Bernard Meunier told Nature. The document specifically denounces a cut of 12%, or about €80 million (US$110 million), in next year’s budget for the National Research Agency (ANR). The ANR (Agence nationale de la recherche) cut will hit basic-research projects particularly hard, placing labs in peril and accelerating the ‘brain drain’, the academy says in its statement. The overall government research budget will lose €82 million, dropping to €7.77 billion, a 1% cut (not adjusting for inflation). |
