The 100 directors of the scientific institutes of the National Research Council (CNR) are the first signatories of a manifesto to save the institution, which is facing a serious financial crisis given that the only cost of personnel, after the stabilization of precarious and the contractual update corresponds to approximately 99% of the State Financing Fund which has been constantly reduced over the years. "The risk for 2019 is having to use the research funds recovered from the world, European and national markets to pay for operating costs rather than research activities, thus making the institution a stationary and essentially useless machine" , reads the press release with which the directors of the Cnr sound the alarm.
For this reason, the 100 directors of the Institutes have turned to the President of the Republic, the President of the Council of Ministers and the Minister of Education, sending them a copy of the Manifesto, which we report here.
MANIFESTO TO SAVE THE CNR
The financial situation of the National Research Council it is particularly difficult. Difficult as it has probably never been since the CNR was founded by Vito Volterra in 1923.
The primary reason for this complicated economic phase in which the country's main research body finds itself can be traced back in the first place to the constant, systematic and short-sighted decline, which has occurred in recent years, of the Fund that the State makes available to the CNR. And this is also due to the superficiality with which a few years ago it was decided to separate a portion from this Fund, fictitiously linked to research projects, but in reality compulsorily returned to a large extent in the cauldron of operating expenses.
Expressing a single number, suffice it to say that, also evaluating the "stabilisations" in progress, the total cost of personnel corresponds to 98.7% of the entire Fund for the CNR!
We are talking about an organization that is divided into over 100 research institutes, distributed throughout the national territory, made up of large infrastructures, operating with sophisticated and highly specialized equipment and with costs proportional to these levels of complexity.
An institution that in recent years has also launched a meritorious work of rationalization of expenses with significant savings (centralization of utilities, reorganization of research network institutes, more generally a real spending review).
However, an organization capable of recovering from the "research market", through participation in international and national competitive tenders, important resources both from a quantitative point of view (about 50% of the value of the State Fund) and from a qualitative point of view (excellence scientific). Fundamental resources for the development of one's own research activities.
In this way the CNR (primarily its researchers and technologists, but also all the support personnel who work in this enterprise) was able to make up for the almost complete lack of funds aimed at research activities (the entire Fund, as we said, is absorbed by personnel costs and partly from ordinary operations).
In reality, these funds recovered from research tenders have also been used to support, at least partially, the operating costs of the institutes and other research activities without specific coverage.
However, systematic de-financing has now reached an incompatible limit with the flexible compensation management adopted in recent years. And this is also due to the concurrence of two cost increase events that on the other hand are to be regarded positively (the contractual update stopped for several years and the hiring of many hundreds of personnel for too long a precarious time).
It is therefore a question of identifying around 100 million in the Italian State budget to relaunch the largest public research body in our country.
It is about offering the future of our country the possibility of continue to rely on multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and frontier research that the CNR has been able to express in excellent ways since it was founded, research areas that are increasingly proving to be a strategic lever for the advancement of our civilization.
It is a matter of indicating as a privileged way for the development of Italy, knowledge and research.
It's about making Italy is a protagonist in the society and in the knowledge economy.
For this reason, as institute and department directors, as researchers and technologists and as staff we appeal to the President and the Board of Directors of the CNR to act as intermediaries with the Government Bodies of the country so that they listen to this request from the CNR and identify ways to make up for this dramatic lack of resources.
THE NEXT INITIATIVES
- THE BLOOD FOR RESEARCH – from the morning of the 14th, an AVIS station for blood collection will be present in the square below the CNR headquarters. The directors and staff of the CNR who are willing/able to contribute will donate blood in the morning as an act of civic engagement and investment for a more cohesive, healthy society that looks to progress.
Donating blood is a necessary investment to save lives and to show that we believe in others and in our future. In the same way, funding scientific research in the right proportions means believing in the civil, economic and strategic development of our society.
- RISK OF DISPOSAL OF RESEARCH PIECES – During the Press Conference in the Marconi hall, each director or his delegate will symbolically deliver an object representing a research field that that institute develops. Without the additional 100 million to the current budget, it will not be possible to maintain the same capacity and effectiveness that the CNR achieves in its own fields: some part of its activities will risk being lost and with them important advances in knowledge and repercussions for the competitiveness of the country system .
