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Petition to protect EU science budget

From Bioblast

Open letter by Maria Leptin, Director EMBO - excellence in life sciences

Dear colleagues,

The discussions at the next summit of the European Union heads of state or government, which is scheduled for 22 and 23 November, will be decisive in determining the EU research budget for the next seven years. Several Member States are demanding severe cuts on the total EU budget and research will have to compete with other policy priorities.

This is a time when we, the scientific community, should act together and make our case to protect research funding, including that of the European Research Council (ERC), from cuts. Decisions will be prepared in discussions among politicians at the national level. All of us must look for opportunities to affect these decisions and send a strong signal to the heads of state or government.

An open letter signed by European Nobel laureates has been published in top European newspapers this week. The impact of this letter will be increased if it is followed by a mobilization of the national scientific communities. To keep the momentum going, an online petition has been launched:

I would like to ask you to sign it and to encourage all your colleagues to do likewise. Note that in the past, less than 30 000 scientists signed the largest petition for a European scientific cause compared to the hundreds of thousands of signatures on petitions from other groups of society. We must do better than that.

This action is coordinated by the Initiative for Science in Europe ([email protected]; www.initiative-science-europe.org), of which EMBO is a member. Please contact Wolfgang Eppenschwandtner, Executive Coordinator of the ISE if you have any questions or suggestions.

Best regards,


Maria Leptin

Director EMBO - excellence in life sciences

Meyerhofstr. 1

69117 Heidelberg, Germany

tel +49-6221-8891-102 fax +49-6221-8891-202

mailto:[email protected]

  • 2012-10-24: This open letter was received from various colleagues.
  • At least 42 Nobel laureates and Fields Medal Winners have signed the petition: Sidney Altman, Werner Arber, Robert J. Aumann, Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, Günter Blobel, Mario Capecchi, Aaron Ciechanover, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, Johann Deisenhofer, Richard R.Ernst, Gerhart Ertl, Martin Evans, Albert Fert, Andre Geim, Serge Haroche, Avram Hershko, Jules A. Hoffmann, Roald Hoffmann, Robert Huber, Tim Hunt, Eric R. Kandel, Klaus von Klitzing, Harold Kroto, Finn Kydland, Jean-Marie Lehn, Eric S. Maskin, Dale T. Mortensen, Erwin Neher, Konstantin Novoselov, Paul Nurse, Christiane Nüsslein-Nolhard, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Richard J. Roberts, Heinrich Rohrer, Bert Sakmann, Bengt I. Samuelsson, John E. Sulston, Jack W. Szostak, John E. Walker, Ada E. Yonath, Rolf Zinkernagel, Harald Zur Hausen; Pierre Deligne, Timothy Gowers, Maxim Kontsevich, Stanislav Smirnov, Cedric Villani.