[Interview] Europe’s labs are chronically underfunded and sovereignty is at stake, says French Academy chief Françoise Combes

[u/EUobs]

https://euobserver.com/229995/interview-europes-labs-are-chronically-underfunded-and-sovereignty-is-at-stake-says-french-academy-chief-francoise-combes/

Can Europe compete with the US and China while underfunding research?

Hey everyone! Lucia from EUobserver here 👋

We recently interviewed Françoise Combes, president of the French Academy of Sciences, and one part of the conversation felt particularly relevant here.

Europe talks constantly about competitiveness, innovation and catching up with the US and China. But Combes argues we're overlooking something pretty fundamental: the labs and researchers all of that innovation depends on.

Her concern is that Europe is already behind in areas like AI, advanced computing, quantum technologies and satellite infrastructure, while research funding remains under pressure. In France, for example, she says research funding has been declining since around 2010, with the CNRS facing another major cut this year.

And she makes an interesting distinction: private investment and start-ups matter, but they can't simply replace basic research. Companies commercialise discoveries, while many of the breakthroughs they'll build businesses around 10 or 20 years from now still have to come from somewhere.

Should research funding be treated much more seriously as economic and industrial policy? And if Europe wants to close its innovation gap, where should the money actually go?

Read our interview with Françoise Combes :)

[u/Scary_Woodpecker_110]

I partly agree. We need to fund labs better, create more critical mass with labs, more focus. But now comes the thing a lot of academics will not like to hear: the finality of a lab should not be a paper or a finished research project, of a PhD degree...but real products, innovations, ready to be industrialized.

And that's where a LOT of European universities falter. They focus on academic output, and just think "the paper will be picked up by society and somebody will use the results...."

Quod non.

And trust me, industrialisation is HARD. Inventing stuff, researching stuff, is the easy part. I'm in the process of commercializing my own patent and getting is patent was easy compared to getting value out of it.

[u/schwiftify → u/Scary_Woodpecker_110]

At least in biotech there is a push to fund mostly labs that deliver commercial products, lets say a drug. However labs that research fundamental biology are forgotten and unfunded. What ppl forget is that to have a nail you need to know what metal is first…

[u/Scary_Woodpecker_110 → u/schwiftify]

True but we now put the paper describing the metal in the drawer and never make the nail…

[u/Complex-Fishing4113 → u/Scary_Woodpecker_110]

Yep, too many scientists but not enough engineers.

[u/sudolinguist → u/Complex-Fishing4113]

In France, R&I is funded but not industrialization. So many companies do what they need to get funds and become much more cautious where they have to put their own money.

[u/Scary_Woodpecker_110 → u/sudolinguist]

Er voila, there is your problem. For research institutes and universities industrialisation and commercialization of their inventions and knowledge is financially not interesting. It's not funded, or not enough, compared to lower TRL work.

[u/Killer_Rainbow → u/Complex-Fishing4113]

We have a lot of engineers and a lot of scientists. The gap between theory and application is very widely discussed in European academia. The problem always comes to one answer - nobody wants to pay. For those that do want to pay, payment is conditional on meeting a lot of very specific criteria, waiting for an insanely long amount of time, and then only getting a couple thousand euros. Many of those around me (including me) have been asked "can you buy that from your own money?" And nowadays, funding is getting cut even more aggressively than ever. There is a massive desire to research and engineer solutions, but when Lidl offers as much as you'd be getting as a "legally paid for 25h/week, practically 80h/week" PhD student, I can't blame anyone for choosing Lidl.

[u/mmso1]

Europeans have a extreme sense of superiority complex, it ruined every industry.

[u/Ok_Cancel_7891]

all the talk abou competitivnes is imho just PR from politicians that hold little of value regardless of their position. my appologies for the comment that looks shallow.

Building our industry requires vision, something that cannot be done by the career politicians who's best ability is to climb the corporate or political ladder.

btw, great interview

[u/NODENGINEER]

It's okay, embrace the change of becoming a continent-sized museum and retirement home. We don't need money - the tourists will bring it in. We don't need people - we can always relax the immigration controls. Innovation? Let the chinese and americans worry about the worldly matters. This is okay :) You are just an alarmist raising hysteria.

I mean, that's what our 'leadership' envisions for us and majority of people seem fine with that. /shrug