Venice

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is making a move to revitalize science in southeastern Europe. It plans to help build computer networks for research and education across the region.

A meeting on scientific cooperation in southeastern Europe, held in Venice last week, identified the lack of such networks as the largest single impediment to strengthening cooperation in the area.

Pierre Lasserre, director of UNESCO's European science and technology office, said the organization would provide US$500,000 to help buy computers and network access in the region's less-advanced countries, including Bulgaria, Romania and the fragments of the former Yugoslavian federation. UNESCO called on the European Union to provide additional financial support.

The meeting, which was co-organized by UNESCO, the Academia Europaea and the European Science Foundation, brought together representatives from 20 European countries, including ten in southeastern Europe. Those from the southeast complained that the area's science base suffers from a lack of support from its national governments.

The situation is particularly acute in the war-torn Balkans. “In the aftermath of the war, academic life has been starved out,” said Nedzad Mulabegovic, rector of the University of Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Speakers also reported a severe “brain drain” from the region. Almost half of Albania's scientists left the country during the 1990s, said Tamara Eftimi, rector of Tirana Polytechnical University.

The meeting agreed that the region's best prospects lay in better access to research facilities in western Europe, particularly for the training of its young scientists. “What we need is a European training space,” said Lasserre.