In a draft proposal for the 2018 budget, the budget for the French ministry of higher education, research and innovation increased by over 6% to €8.4 billion ($9.9 billion). Moreover, an additional €2.4 billion ($2.8 billion), part of an economic recovery plan, will be allotted for R&D over the next five years.

As per the draft proposal, the budget for the French National Research Agency will rise 5% to €706 million ($836.7 million). However, as grant funding is extremely competitive at the Agency, this increase may not address the 12% grant application success rate. Basic research agency CNRS and biomedical agency INSERM are both expected to receive a 1% increase to their budgets to €5.94 billion ($7.0 billion), with portions of the budget going towards attracting international climate scientists to France as part of President Emmanual Macron’s Make Our Planet Great Again campaign.

Source: Nature