Focus on the French election

In the week of the first round of France’s presidential elections, Nature takes a unique look at what the incoming president will mean for French research.

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News: Focus on the French election

In the week of the first round of France’s presidential elections, Nature takes a unique look at what the incoming president will mean for French research. Ségolène Royal, Nicolas Sarkozy and François Bayrou, the only contenders in the race who might ultimately win the presidency, go into unprecedented detail on their plans for French science and technology in response to questions sent to them by the magazine. The result is the fullest view available anywhere of the role that research will play in the thinking of the next president.

All three candidates pledge large increases in science spending alongside reforms to the research system. Bayrou proposes a 5% increase to the research budget every year over the next ten years, while Royal pledges a 10% increase in the research and innovation budget every year for the five years of the presidency. She also calls for spending on research to be excluded from consideration under the European Union’s stability and growth pact, which limits public spending in eurozone countries. Sarkozy pledges €4 billion extra for research and €5 billion for higher education.

The candidates also talk of the reforms needed in research and higher education. In 2004, reform proposals and dissatisfaction with the status quo led to demonstrations across the country. Sarkozy says he would replace France’s system, which is dominated by large research agencies, with an Anglo-Saxon model of universities funded via competitive grant proposals. He talks of his dream that there should be French universities that might rank with Oxford and Cambridge. Bayrou and Royal support less grandiose reforms, directed to specific needs.

On environmental issues, Royal promises a 75% reduction in France’s carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, and argues that renewables will also be able to reduce the country’s reliance on nucler power. Sarkozy calls for the United States, China and Canada to be subject to sanctions through new World Trade Organization procedures if they fail to share the burden of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions in a post-Kyoto world. And Bayrou and Royal both criticize the lack of consultation over plans to replace France’s fleet of nuclear reactors with a new design, the European pressurized reactor.

Royal and Bayrou favour a moratorium on open-field cultivation of genetically modified organisms and call for greater public debate on this and other scientific issues. Sarkozy stops short of calling for a moratorium but says he has reservations on planting genetically modified crops until research verifies their safety.

Extracts from the candidate’s responses will appear in Nature; the full texts, in both English and the original French, will be available on Nature’s website.

Also in this week’s special coverage of French research, a feature canvasses opinion from across the French research spectrum on what students, professors, industrialists and researchers who have gone overseas see as the stronger and weaker points of French research. Nature’s Paris-based reporter, Declan Butler, analyses the statistics on France’s research performance, and concludes that the decline of French science, a subject of much navel-gazing, has been exaggerated. And in an Editorial the journal offers its own analysis of the way forward for French research.

Contact for background information

Declan Butler (Journalist, Nature)
Tel: +33 1 43 36 59 90; E-mail: [email protected]

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Helen Jamison (Nature, London)

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Published: 18 Apr 2007

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