These are worrying times for Italian researchers. Not only are they facing the prospect of budget cuts, but a proposal leaked from the research ministry in August has raised the spectre of further political control over the CNR, Italy's national research council.

The news that the right-leaning government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was planning to restructure Italian science came as a shock. After all, the paint is not yet dry on reforms introduced by the previous centre-left government, which regrouped the CNR's 330 institutes into the hundred that now exist (see Nature 412, 264–265; 2001). The leaked document's content was even more disturbing than its sudden appearance: it proposed dividing the CNR into 15 directorates, the head of each to be appointed by the research ministry, and suggested that a range of other independent agencies and institutes should be rolled into the CNR.

Italian science has long been plagued by a system that appoints the heads of research agencies according to political allegiance, rather than competence. And the prospect of this unwelcome patronage reaching further down into the management of the CNR, and encompassing bodies that currently lie outside the council's influence, has sparked petitions and rallies of protest (see Nature 419, 240; 2002). Guido Possa, deputy minister for research, claimed the document was merely one of a number of very early drafts. But as the weeks have passed with an absence of discernible consultation, few scientists are reassured that the final document, expected to be released later this month, will be significantly different.

So far, all that has emerged is a proposed 2.5% cut in the publicly funded research budget. What's more, the government proposes to end special funding arrangements for the INFM, an independent agency for research into atomic, molecular and condensed-matter physics created in 1994. As a result, the INFM faces having its core budget slashed by more than a third, while being subsumed into the CNR.

It is all a far cry from the first few months after the Berlusconi administration's election in April last year, when Possa's boss, education and research minister Letizia Moratti, committed to double the research budget over the next five years.

In line with Berlusconi's business-friendly ideology, Possa likes to compare research organizations to profit-making companies. This is misguided. Before it is too late, he should talk with, and listen to, the scientific community, in Italy and abroad, to explain what his government wants to achieve, and to learn how best to make use of his country's highly educated researchers. If he does so, Possa will learn that independence, not tight political control, is the key to success in basic research. He might also be reminded that reforms introduced alongside significant budget cuts are rarely a success.