…The protests started with a letter published in Nature a few weeks ago by renowned Sapienza physicist Giorgio Parisi, which was co-signed by 69 other researchers. The letter said that Italy “seriously neglects its research base,” and urged the European Union to pressure national governments, including Italy’s, “into keeping their research funding above subsistence level.”
The letter was accompanied by an online petition, so far signed by more than 50,000 people, arguing that the European Union should require member states to spend at least 3% of gross domestic product on research and development—as stipulated in the Lisbon strategy of 2000—just as it requires them to limit budget deficits. Currently, Italy spends just 1.25% of its GDP on research.
….Government funding for Italy’s universities has fallen by about €1 billion (13%) since 2009, Parisi pointed out at the meeting.
….“Young researchers in particular have no prospects. Some will go abroad, while others will become demoralized,” said Francesco Ricci, a chemist at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, whose department of about 40 has been awarded just one new research post the last 5 years, while six people have retired. “It is a dramatic situation,” Ricci said. Fabiola Gianotti, the new boss of the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, agreed. “At CERN I see that many Italians go and work in Germany, France, or the U.S.,” Gianotti said, speaking from Japan via video link.
The problem is not just the lack of money, but also that funding is handed out erratically.
Za primerjavo iz poročila ARRS za 2014: Proračun Agencije [ARRS] se je od leta 2009 do leta 2014 znižal s 183,9 milijona EUR na 136,5 milijona EUR, kar pomeni upad za 25,8 %.
