paris

Trade unions representing French scientists were increasingly confident of victory this week in their demand that the government should not undertake any new reforms before the completion of a national consultation on research in July. They appear to have won the support of the prime minister's office.

The unions had called on researchers to support a national day of protest on 11 May to secure this commitment. But on Monday it seemed that the science ministry had bowed to their main demand, postponing an interministerial meeting on research originally scheduled for 18 May.

The unions had argued that the ministry's decision to proceed with the meeting suggested that it would ignore the consultation and push ahead with its own reform plans (see Nature 399, 4; 1999). The ministry countered that the meeting would deal only with strategic research themes and industrial research.

A science ministry spokesperson says the meeting will only be postponed by a matter of days, but Herbert Maisl, science adviser to Lionel Jospin, the prime minister, says it is “cancelled until further notice”.

The prime minister's office is now setting the timetable for reform. Jospin himself commissioned the parliamentary mission, following Socialist Party concern that science minister Claude Allègre's attempts to impose reform were opposed by the research and higher education community.

The unions' claims that the science ministry might only pay lip service to the consultation seemed to be strengthened last week by a leaked preparatory document for the meeting. The document, released by the unions on Friday, largely covers the remit of the parliamentary mission, which is led by two Socialist members of the national assembly, Pierre Cohen (Haute-Garonne) and Jean-Yves Le Déaut (Meurthe-et-Moselle), a former head of the Parliamentary Office of Scientific and Technological Choices.

Le Déaut plays down the document's significance, arguing that it dates from several months ago. This is confirmed by Jean-Yves Mérindol, vice-chancellor of the University of Strasbourg and chairman of the research committee of the Conference of University Vice-Chancellors.

Le Déaut says Allègre gave him his personal guarantee last week that “no decision would be taken within the remit of our mission until this is completed”.

Cohen says any attempt by the interministerial meeting to answer the questions of the mission will not be tolerated. The decision of the prime minister's office suggests that it shares this view.