Last week the French Council of Ministers approved the country's long-awaited draft reform on research, endorsing the government's strategy to mend an understaffed and under-funded system. Scientists, however, continued to speak out against the reform, saying that the new bill does not do enough, and may even threaten basic research.
"All the government has demonstrated in the past months and again in this draft is its support for applied research, this betrays that its only priority is innovation," Alain Trautmann, spokesperson for the Association Sauvons la Recherche (Let's save research), told
The government hopes the "Pact for Research" will boost France to the leading ranks of the international scientific competition. To do so, it plans to spend an extra 6 billion Euros (7.1 billion dollars) over three years on research, increase tax exoneration for private research, and encourage public-private measures intended to make the profession more attractive to ...
