Austrian scientists celebrate CERN U-turn

Chancellor overturns science minister's decision to end 50-year participation in physics laboratory

Austria will stay in CERN Credit: CERN

Austria has reversed its decision to withdraw from CERN, Europe's particle-physics laboratory near Geneva in Switzerland.

On 8 May, science minister Johannes Hahn had announced that Austria would end its participation in 2010. Instead, the country would use its annual contribution of about €17 million (US$23 million) to make up shortfalls in the country's research budget. The decision sent shock waves through the country's physics community (see Nature 459, 151; 2009).

Protests were not in vain. On 18 May, Chancellor Werner Faymann overruled his science minister and announced that Austria would continue its 50-year-old membership in CERN without cuts.

"Austrian science as a whole will benefit from this firm declaration of belief in basic research," says Christian Fabjan, director of the Austrian Academy of Sciences' Institute for High Energy Physics in Vienna.

CERN buildings