France's right-wing president Jacques Chirac has promised to boost innovation and increase public spending on research if he is re-elected.
In a manifesto released to Nature, but not yet made public, Chirac pledges to convert the research ministry into a ministry for research and innovation. He wants to boost the mobility of researchers between the public and private sectors and plans tax breaks to encourage corporate R&D investment.
Chirac also argues that public and private spending on R&D should increase from the current 2.1% of French gross domestic product to 3% by the end of the decade. "The commitment to research must be historic," says the manifesto.
Industrial groups welcome Chirac's focus on innovation. But some researchers will be disappointed that the plan does little to address the problems of French universities — which house more than 80% of the laboratories run by public research agencies. Obstacles to mobility and autonomy for young researchers are a particular concern.
Chirac's rival for the presidency, socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin, has pledged to bring universities and research back under one ministry if he wins the election on 5 May (see Nature 416, 253; 2002).
Many researchers remember their experiences under the last right-wing government, when budgets were cut. "Even if Jospin's track record in terms of research is mixed, that doesn't erase the memory of the 1993–97 period," says Edouard Brézin, a physicist at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and a former president of the CNRS, France's main agency for basic research.
Gérard Tobelem, a haematologist at the University of Paris VII and national secretary for research in Chirac's RPR party, concedes that research wasn't a priority for the last right-wing government. But he argues that the new plan has "a total awareness of what is now at stake for French science".
In France, the prime minister has ultimate responsibility for science policy. But if parliamentary elections in June go the same way as the presidential election, the new president will be free to appoint a prime minister of his own political persuasion. Chirac and Jospin are currently running neck-and-neck in the opinion polls.
