A pledge to slash France’s budget deficit by a whopping €60 billion over the next year has dashed the hopes of many of the country’s scientists to catch up with their better funded European neighbors.
The research and higher education budget was largely spared in a cost-cutting finance bill presented by the government on 10 October. But scientists are bitterly disappointed that the bill does not make good on an ambitious 10-year funding plan enshrined in a 2020 law, which promised to inject an extra €25 billion into public research.
“We had a budgetary program which was planned until 2030 [and] today the question is, will this budgetary program be respected? We are very worried,” says Boris Gralak, an optics researcher at CNRS, France’s major multidisciplinary research center, and state secretary of the national trade union for scientific research.
Last week’s belt-tightening budget did not come as a huge surprise. France’s spiraling public debt currently sits at 112% of its gross domestic product (GDP)—among the worst in Europe—and the country faces pressure from the European Commission to bring it under control. In response, the government has proposed €40 billion of spending cuts for 2025—including cuts to public sector jobs and social security benefits—and tax hikes for the wealthy and large corporations worth €20 billion.
Despite the cuts, the overall research and higher education budget, which is spread across five ministries, will only decrease slightly, from €31.43 billion this year to €31.07 billion in 2025. The higher education and research ministry, which receives the bulk of this funding, gains €89 million in 2025. The National Research Agency, which funds competitive research projects, will see its budget increase by €120 million.
Still, these meager rises in funding are not enough to offset inflation, says Julien Gossa, a computer scientist at the University of Strasbourg. Nor do they compensate for February’s surprise €900 million cut to this year’s budget that came just months after President Emmanuel Macron promised an ambitious overhaul of the research and higher education system. What was not funded then is lost forever, Gralak says.
There’s a broader concern: The budget does not meet targets set out in a 2020 science law aimed at making French science more competitive by funding a battery of specific measures while raising the country’s overall R&D spending to 3% of GDP by 2030. The 2020 law promises to invest an extra €25 billion in public research spending over a decade. To stay on track, the 2025 budget of the higher education and research ministry would have had to climb by €470 million compared with this year.
This is the first year the proposed budget has significantly diverged from the requirements set out in the law, says Alain Fischer, president of the French Academy of Sciences. Following years of “mediocre” funding, “the gap with neighboring countries … is increasing, which means that the attractiveness of French research is necessarily decreasing,” Fischer says, adding that he feels “frankly concerned and a little desperate.”
When presenting the budget on 10 October, the higher education and research ministry was quick to reassure scientists that there is enough funding to continue to implement all key measures promised under the 2020 law—if not at the expected level—such as increasing salaries and restructuring career progression for university teachers and researchers.
Many scientists were also disappointed that the government did not announce changes to a controversial policy that allows companies to claim back tax for research expenses. The tax credit currently costs the country €7 billion each year—money some scientists would like to see mostly redirected to public research. In a petition published by the radical researcher collective RogueESR in the national newspaper Le Monde on 10 October, Gossa and some other 3300 signatories stated that “by depriving public research and universities of funding, the [tax credit] deteriorates the French research and training ecosystem.”
The finance bill must now make it through France’s politically fractured parliament. The government, which does not hold a majority, may decide to force the bill into law if no consensus can be found. But many researchers hope the outlook for science will improve as the bill is debated. Through the trade union, Gralak plans to pressure lawmakers to meet the funding commitments set out in the science law. But even then, Fischer warns, the promised cash injection would still be “insufficient” for France to catch up to its better funded neighbors.
