With the mixed results of the Italian election in earlier this month, Italian researchers are worried that science will not receive a boost in funding. The lack of a coalition government results in uncertainty for scientists, as most parties have not put an emphasis on accelerating science, and the state of R&D in the country is in a precarious condition.

Although Italy excels in biomedicine and particle physics, consistently low budgets, overly bureaucratic academic hiring processes and politically limited research organizations have contributed to the stagnation of Italy’s science and research system. The center-left coalition government, led by a member of the Democratic Party, has proposed initiatives such as establishing the Human Technopole, a €1.5 billion ($1.9 billion) Milan-based research center for genomics and personalized medicine.

Italian research institutions require higher budgets to fulfill their goals, but the country, which has traditionally been on the lower end of R&D spending in the EU, has not experienced a rise in funding, with its R&D spending plummeting 20%, or €1.2 billion ($1.5 billion) since 2008 to total €8.7 billion ($10.8 billion) in 2016. Over the same time period, university funding has also dropped approximately 20% to €7 billion ($8.7 billion). Public research institute funding has remained the same since 2008, a 9% decline in real terms. The country also has an extremely high deficit, making it unlikely that the science funding system will change in the near future.

Source: Nature