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Over the last decade, the global R&D effort of our country (public + corporate) has remained desperately stagnant, slightly above 2%. Thus, the Lisbon treaty of 2000 (and its 3% objective) has by no means been respected. There have even been clear attempts to reduce our public effort, for instance by Jacques Chirac in 2003, which has led to the movement “Sauvons La Recherche” in 2004, which has blocked this first cutting attempt. Since then, the only major change has been the huge increase of the “Crédit Impôt Recherche“, decided by Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007. This measure, which now costs 6000 million euros every year, is a tax reduction for private companies that have a research activity (or pretend to do so, for some banks and insurance companies). This is counted in the “public effort for research”, but is not at all for public research or universities. This and other tricks have allowed N. Sarkozy to claim that he has been doing major efforts in favour of research, in an attempt to hide the real stagnation for global funding (with major changes in the allocation system), and clear reductions in stable jobs in public research. This reduction has become very clear after 2009, and François Hollande now applies very conscientiously the policy of Sarkozy. The latter, inspired by the “excellence initiative” initiated by Germany, has launched in 2010 a similar initiative called “Programme d’investissement d’avenir (PIA)”, for which he has decided a 20 billion euros public loan. However, his government has simultaneously operated a series of cuts, so that the global balance is close to zero.
(Fonte: A. Trautmann, interview was made by C. di Foggia for the issue of ll Fatto Quotidiano 08-09-2014)
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