The French government has announced a series of measures to overhaul the country’s organization of research, which President Emmanuel Macron claims will reduce bureaucracy and place science “at the heart of political decision-making”.
The reforms represent the biggest shake-up to France’s research system in about two decades, and are in line with proposals submitted by geophysicist Philippe Gillet at the request of research minister Sylvie Retailleau earlier this year. They include the creation of a Presidential Science Council, a group of 12 leading scientists that will meet several times a year and advise the president on research strategy and key issues facing scientists.
Macron presented the billion-euro plan to around 300 researchers, politicians and business leaders at the Élysée Palace in Paris on 7 December. “It is rare for a French president to speak about science at such length and in such detail,” says immunologist Alain Fischer, president of the French Academy of Sciences, based in Paris. “It is clear Macron has heeded scientists’ warnings about the problems in French research.”
Over the next 18 months, the country’s seven national research institutes will be transformed into ‘programme agencies’, each responsible for the strategy and coordination of all research on a particular theme, Macron said. At the moment, research in each discipline is scattered across various public institutions.
Massive shake-up of French science system is biggest in decades (nature.com)