Sir

Nature pays a lot of attention to the plight of postdocs everywhere (see for example Nature 407, 119; 2000, Nature 408, 637; 2000 and Nature 410, 137; 2001) and North American PhD students (see Nature 409, 442; 2001) but only occasionally to European PhD students (see Nature 410, 299; 2001). European science needs a sense of European identity before it can speak with one voice.

For this reason, students and young scientists from 15 countries have collaborated to found Eurodoc, the Council for European doctoral and postdoctoral students (http://www.precarios.org/eurodoc/index.htm). It includes the national PhD, or PhD and postdoctoral, students' unions of Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Hungary, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom; and local unions from Belgium (Leuven), Estonia (Tartu), Greece (Athens), Ireland, Latvia and Slovakia. Eurodoc's second general assembly will be in Girona, Spain, from 31 January to 3 February 2002.

The organization is not only revealing similarities in the difficulties that students face throughout Europe, but is also highlighting the differences between education systems. One of Eurodoc's functions is to identify these disparities and bring them to the attention of the European Union, European governments' education ministries, scientific societies and the public.

Senior scientists and politicians are already aware of some problems faced by PhD students, but others are unknown or their importance is not properly understood. Eurodoc will therefore explain national systems and report problems, from the student perspective, to the scientific community to encourage international discussion about these European issues.