Sir

Your editorial, “Dangers of Euro-relevance”, urges: “In the absence of strong European alternatives, all the more reason for European governments to keep their national support for basic research” (Nature 398, 1; 1999). I disagree with this conclusion which seems to want to maintain the status quo in research funding.

The European system of national research agencies hinders high-quality research. I have just reviewed, for agencies in the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Spain, grant applications that had significant overlap. As each agency uses a different pool of reviewers, such overlap is unlikely to be spotted normally, so duplicated projects are funded, wasting resources.

Even when the pressure from Republicans to decentralize the US government was at its height, the Democrats won the argument when they asked: “Do you want an Arkansas or a Montana National Institutes of Health?”. It seems that Nature advocates just such a development in European science agencies.

The pressure should instead be on the European Union to support basic science, perhaps using the dividend from the reformed Common Agricultural Policy. At a minimum, agencies should draw reviewers from all European countries, instead of only using national lists, as many still do.