SPAIN THE COUNTRY WHERE LAWS PARALYZE THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE
Spain The Country Where Laws Paralyze the Progress of Science
You have to have a lot of courage to be a scientist in this country because the bureaucracy eats you by the feet, “says Francisco Sánchez, a scientist at the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO) for 35 years. Currently participates in Intemares, a pioneering project to study Spanish marine protected areas funded with almost 50 million euros, “the largest in marine research in the entire European Union,” he stresses. The IEO is in charge of studying the mud volcanoes in the Gulf of Cádiz or the cold water corals of the Bay of Biscay, among other areas of the Natura 2000 Network, but the work has been practically paralyzed since March 2017. It was necessary to hire 25 researchers and technicians to get it going and the administration did not arrive until a few days ago. Now the legal process of oppositions will begin, which will take another five or six months. In total, a year and a half to hire scientists when other partners of the project, such as the Fundación Biodiversidad, subject to more flexible administrative regulations, take 15 days, regrets Sanchez. “We’ve never seen problems like these, ever. We have been in charge of many different ministries but never had a government had so little interest in science, “laments the researcher.
The IEO is a scientific advisory body to the Government in matters of oceanography whose data help to assign fishing quotas and analyze the state of the coast and its fauna. The agency, under the Ministry of Economy and founded in the late nineteenth century, is in a situation of “paralysis”, as recently reported 322 of its 547 workers.
Almost all the problems that the IEO scientists have are reminiscent
of “come back tomorrow.” Or better next year. The Francisco de Paula
Navarro, one of the five ships of the IEO, is anchored with the engine
seized since February 2017. The study on the banks of sardines and other
species of commercial interest has been waiting for months to hire an
expert DNA researcher that can analyze the data collected. Some
scientists work in shabby improvised labs in old garages. The processing
of purchases and contracts essential to start projects is a “Kafkaesque
loop”, as defined by a researcher. Anyone who calls the IEO these days
and asks to speak with their press officer will check it on their own
flesh. The journalist’s contract is pending renewal for months and until
then can not work.
One of the causes of this situation is a law whose objective is to
combat corruption. Since 2014, public research organizations (OPI), like
the rest of the administration, have been subject to prior fiscal
intervention, which translates into the deployment of tax inspectors in
the research centers that review each procedure, each expense, before
approving it. The universities and the Superior Council of Scientific
Research were exempt from this rule. In the other seven Spanish IPOs,
the comings and goings of files between the intervention and the
researchers means that the research projects start with delays of more
than one year. The main claim of the researchers of the IEO and other
IPOs is that this regulation be lifted.
To this it is added that, until the budgets of 2018 are approved, the
IPOs can only spend half of their budgets, the reason that explains,
among other problems, that Francisco de Paula is unemployed in Mahón and
without an expected date of repair. The engine broke in the open sea
and the ship and its crew had to be towed to the port of Menorca by
Salvamento Marítimo. “This is a storm that is more than perfect, every
time we have less personnel and more bureaucracy”, recognizes José
Ignacio Díaz, head of the IEO fleet, a senior official who decided not
to sign the protest manifesto. “Complaining is fine, but you can not be
ignorant and think that the situation will change just because. I know
that the Secretary of State for R & D and the management of the IEO
are trying to solve it, but they can not deal with the closure of the
Ministry of Finance and its laws. And the laws must be fulfilled yes, or
yes, “he says.
The IEO staff has fallen by 20% since 2011, which has exacerbated
internal problems. Almost any administrative procedure of its nine
oceanographic centers on the coast has to go through the headquarters of
Madrid, where there are only two workers in the project unit, three in
the staff and three in the recruitment, explains Materia Eduardo
Balguerías , director of the IEO, for an organization that manages
dozens of projects and an annual budget of about 60 million euros. “The
IEO has a structural weakness in its central administrative and
scientific management services inherited from the past, which makes it
more vulnerable to bureaucracy and less agile to respond to the demands
of intervention,” says Balguerías. In his manifesto, the workers accused
him of “conformism” for not having denounced the situation publicly.
Balguerías’s message to them is: “The IEO is in a difficult situation
that I am sure we will resolve,” and adds that it is giving detailed
explanations in meetings with each center.
Recent movements of the Ministry of Finance show that the laws are
not as immovable as they are painted. This month, the Secretary of State
for Budgets, Alberto Nadal, approved an exception to the budgetary rule
that allows the expenditure of an additional 6.7 million euros in 2018
to the Center for Energy, Environmental and Technological Research,
another affected OPI in which hundreds of scientists signed a complaint
manifesto for their situation of “collapse” published by this newspaper.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Economy’s R + D + i secretariat of
state explains that this department will support a plan to decentralize
the IEO and adds that the Treasury has been asked “not to apply the
prior intervention to the IPOs or at least it is restricted to certain
files “.
On Tuesday, Finance Minister Cristóbal Montoro explained that the
budget proposal for 2018 includes an increase of 8.3% for civil and
military investigation. But many researchers think that the important
thing is not money, but to change the laws that are paralyzing the
investigation. “Although these regulations affect us all, the most
punished are the middle classes of research, to the point that some
centers are at risk of disappearing,” explains Luis Serrano, president
of Somma, the union of 41 centers and Severo Ochoa and María de Maeztu
units that receive additional funding from the Government for their high
quality. A few days ago, Serrano met with parliamentary groups to
propose urgent legal reforms in the rules of public procurement and the
VAT refund, among other issues that threaten to stop the research
activity in its tracks. “Everyone agrees that the laws are approved
without taking into account the science and have presented initiatives
not law to try to solve it, but from there they have to go climbing up
and in the end they run into the Treasury,” he says. Once the laws are
approved, it is more complicated to change them, especially in a
political situation like the current one, which is why Serrano advocates
the creation of a science advisory office both in Parliament and in the
presidency of the Government, as happens in other countries. . “Science
should be a matter of country.
-https://viraldimas.com/spain-the-progress-of-science-paralyzed-by-the-laws-of-the-country/
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