Paris

Researchers at the Pasteur Institute claim a move to the outskirts of Paris will compromise their work. Credit: INSTITUT PASTEUR

Scientists at the Pasteur Institute in central Paris are protesting over plans to relocate part of the prestigious research centre to a commercial zone on the outskirts of the city. So bitter has the row with management become that the institute has called in an outside mediator to defuse the tension.

Over the past few months, hundreds of Pasteur scientists have received letters from management informing them that their labs will be moving to Fresnes for several years while the central campus is renovated. Some of the institute's most senior scientists are among those told they will move. Staff object not only to the move itself but also to how the decisions have been made.

Researchers say that the 17,000-square-metre Fresnes site in the Val-de-Marne region southeast of Paris is in an undesirable commercial zone with poor public transport. And with little hope of attracting good young scientists, they argue, the move would be a recipe for intellectual death by isolation.

Almost half of the staff have already signed a petition stating that they “understand neither the necessity, nor the rationale” of the move, which they claim “would be a major scientific handicap” to the institute.

The Fresnes site, estimated to be worth some €13 million (US$17 million), was donated to the Pasteur earlier this year by the drug firm Pfizer. The institute says the site solves space problems for the renovation and will allow for a planned expansion. Local authorities have promised to provide subsidies of €4.3 million for the Pasteur as the core of a planned biotech science park, according to the Val-de-Marne Economic Development Agency.

Agnès Labigne, head of the Pasteur's Pathogenesis of Mucosal Bacteria unit, says the renovations are being used as a “pretext” to justify “Fresnes at any price”. She stepped down as head of her department in March because, she says, the Pasteur management ignored the conclusions of a task force that the renovation could be carried out without displacing groups to Fresnes.

The relocation row has also brought to a head tensions over what staff see as the brash management style of the institute's director-general, Philippe Kourilsky. He wrote in a letter to the scientists that the early notices about the move were “badly received by many of you, who judged it brutal, and were rightly astonished that it was not preceded or accompanied by personal contact with management”. He says management had intended to talk to them on the day the notes were sent.

Kourilsky was travelling and unavailable for comment. But senior vice-president for scientific affairs Stewart Cole, acting spokesman in Kourilsky's absence, admits that there is a problem. “At the moment there are a lot of difficult decisions to be made, or to be reversed. I don't think the consultation has been good,” says Cole. But he adds: “Everyone genuinely feels they are acting in the best interests of the Pasteur.”

Cole and Philippe Sansonetti, head of the institute's cell-biology department, have now persuaded management to bring in a mediator, John Skehel. Skehel is director of Britain's National Institute for Medical Research in London — itself no stranger to fights over site relocation (see Nature 432, 662; 2004doi:10.1038/432662a).

“The situation has got completely out of hand,” says Cole. “We need a few months to see what the most sensible way out is. But we need to do this in a concerted, open and constructive manner.” Skehel is expected to deliver his initial conclusions by the end of January.