London

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, say researchers there who are facing funding cuts. In a bid to improve the country's social welfare system, the new Liberal–Conservative coalition government says it must drain money from universities, research councils and its own independent labs.

Denmark spends about DKr12 billion (US$1.4 billion) of public money on research each year, and some DKr10 billion on the country's higher education system. The new government, elected on 20 November last year, wanted to cut university funding by 6%, but was forced on 4 February to reduce this to 2% — about DKr200 million — after industry and other political parties protested.

“DKr200 million may sound very little, but Denmark is a small country,” says Jens Rehfeld, a protein chemist at the University of Copenhagen's hospital. He says that the new administration has already “sent out a very bad signal to science”.

Funding for the country's research councils is also set to fall. Currently standing at DKr1 billion annually, it will drop to about DKr650 million by the end of 2004, as several programmes that began in the mid-1990s finish and are not replaced. Jens Christian Djurhuus, chairman of the Danish Medical Research Council, says this will reduce the number of PhD students by about 20%, just as the biotechnology industry is calling for their numbers to be doubled. “Our position in the international community will be severely weakened,” he says.

Dan Jensen, head of research at the newly formed Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, admits that the fears are justified. “There is truth behind these complaints,” he says. “Everybody has to pay for social welfare.” However, he says that the government intends to channel DKr400 million from the sale of mobile-phone licences into research.

One early casualty of cutbacks is the small-satellite programme at the Danish Space Research Institute in Copenhagen. The programme's funding has been withdrawn by the government, raising doubts over the institute's Rømer satellite, which was intended to analyse light from nearby stars.

Danish participation in CERN, the European particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, to which the country currently contributes DKr100 million a year, could also be affected. “We're approaching a bare-bones situation now,” says Ole Hansen, a physicist at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. “It's difficult to see how we can continue our involvement on a decent level.”