Draft state budget for science and changes to the rules of co-financing the European funds - CAS statements

Within days, the field of science and research has been affected by two major decisions of the Czech government: a proposal to shorten the budget for science and research and to reduce the budget of the CAS itself as well as changes to the rules of co-financing the European funds. The CAS issued two disapprobatory opinions on these events.

As stated by the CAS in its opinions published on the main website of the CAS, the government proposes a reduction "by about 10% for 2024, which would lead to an overall decrease in the R&D&I budget by more than CZK 12 billion compared to the current proposal of the Council for Research, Development and Innovation, and in the case of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, to a decrease in institutional funds in its budget chapter by approximately CZK 600 million." As a result, the ratio of government budget expenditure on science to GDP after 2020 would fall from a peak of 0.67% in 2020 to 0.54% in 2023, which is lower than the EU and OECD averages (0.63%) and much less than the share in scientifically advanced countries such as Germany, where the share of science funding from the state budget is 0.93% of GDP.

(The full press release can be found here  in Czech only).

The Vědavýzkum article presents a statement by Minister Helena Langšádlová, who warns of the threat of "brain drain", loss of competitiveness and, as a result, prosperity.

Of course, the entire academic community reacted to the proposal to cut the budget for science and research. As another article on Vědavýzkum shows, the Science Lives! Forum also responded to the government's proposal as well as the Czech Rectors Conference in a similar spirit.

At the same time, the Ministry of Finance has also proposed amending the rules for co-financing the European Structural and Investment Funds. According to the opinion of the CAS, this will cause "a collapse of scientific research activities at the workplaces of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and a serious threat to research at public universities", because "the proposal suggests an increase in the co-financing rate of grants from some European funds in Prague to at least 50% and in other regions to at least 20%", which makes it impossible to finance this in connection with the reduction of the budget for science and research in general.

(The full opinion can be found here, again in Czech only.)

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